Chairperson: Prof.

Madhurima Verma
Subject Coordinator: Prof. Sheena Pall
Course Leader: Prof. Sheena Pall
M.A. HISTORY SEMESTER III
PAPERS –III & IV OPT. (VIII) NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN INDIA 1858-1947

CONTENT
 Introductory Letter
 Syllabus

L. No. Title Author/ Editor

1 Different Historiographic Schools of Indian Ms. Parampreet Kaur

Nationalism
Early and Peasants Dr. Neha Sharma
2
Association
s Uprisings 1859-
1880
Theories of Origin and Foundation of the
3 Indian National Congress and its Social Dr. Neha Sharma
Basis
4 National Awakening and Socio-Religious Dr. Neha Sharma
Social Reforms (Hindu)
5 National Awakening and Socio-Religious Dr. Neha Sharma
Social Reforms (Muslims)
6 The Moderate and Extremist Phase of the Dr. Neha Sharma
Indian National Congress
The Swadeshi Movement, 1905-08; The Prof. Sheena Pall
7
Home Rule Movement
Emergence of Gandhi and his Ideology Dr. Neha Sharma
8
of Mass Participation
9 Critical Assessment of Khilafat and Non- Dr. Neha Sharma
Cooperation Movement
Civil Disobedience Movement; 1940
10 Dr. Neha Sharma
Satyagraha and Quit India Movement
11 Freedom Struggle in Princely States Dr. Neha Sharma
12 Revolutionary Movement since 1905 Ms. Parampreet Kaur
13 Left Wing Politics and Youth Organizations Ms. Parampreet Kaur
1
14 Indian National Army Ms. Parampreet Kaur
Communal Strands; Muslim League
15 and Hindu Mahasabha; Last Phase of Dr. Neha Sharma
the Struggle; Freedom and Partition;
Why
Congress and Gandhi Accept Partition

Vetting: Prof. Sheena Pall

E-Mail from Department -

[email protected] Phone number of Department -
0172-2534329

2
INTRODUCTION

Dear students, the paper is a study of rise and growth of National Movement in India
from 1858- 1947. The second half of the 19th century witnessed the full flowering of the
national political consciousness and the growth of an organized national movement in
India. It was British rule and its direct and indirect consequences, which provided the
material, moral, and intellectual conditions for the development of a national movement
in India. This paper has been divided into four units. In Unit I, the historical context of
Indian nationalism has been undertaken with a holistic interpretation of different
approaches and interpretations such as Colonialist, Nationalist, Marxist, and Subaltern.
It also discussesthe theories of origin, foundation and social base of the Indian National
Congress. Unit II discusses the role of the early religious reform movements in arousing
national consciousness by recasting the old religion into a new form suited to meet the
needs of a new society. Its leaders like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Dayanand
Saraswati, Atmaram Pandurang, Swami Vivekananda, etc. became the torch-bearers of
Indian nationalism and aroused national consciousness in the minds of millions of
Indians. It also studies the series of important events giving expression to growing
nationalists sentiments like the first nationalistic revolutionary movement for Indian
independence which emerged from Bengal, i.e. the Swadeshi Movement, the growth of
extremists phase of INC and the Home Rule Movement. Unit III studies the first
organized mass based struggles under the leadership of Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi for attaining self-rule. Unit IV studies the other strands of the National
Movement. Swaraj meant different things to different people, so different methods were
adopted for achieving Swaraj. This unit will study the rise of Left Wing politics,
revolutionary methods, the role played by INA under the leadership of Subhash
Chandra Bose, and rise of communal politics leading to freedom and partition of the
country.

Coordinator
Department of History University
School of Open Learning
Panjab University, Chandigarh
Contact no. 01722534329

3
SYLLABUS
PAPERS –III & IV OPT. (VIII) NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN INDIA 1858-1947
COURSE CODE: HIS 212
Objective: The course aims to trace the Indian National Movement from 1858 to 1947
focusing on how different historiographic schools view Indian Nationalism. Emphasis of
the course is on the role played by INC from 1885 to 1947 and Gandhi in leading the
country to freedom in 1947. The other strands of the National Movement particularly the
Revolutionary and Left wing and youth organizations along with the communal strands
are highlighted.
Pedagogy: The course is taught on the basis of lectures, seminars, discussions and
tutorials.
Note: The candidate will be evaluated on the basis of a written examination (80 marks)
and Internal Continuous Assessment (20 marks). In the written examination, the
question paper will have the following format: The maximum marks in this paper/option
will be 80 and duration of written examination will be 3 hours..
(i) There will be 9 questions in all. The candidate will be required to attempt 5
questions.
(ii) Question No.1 will be compulsory and carry 20 marks. It will consist of 15
short questions from the list of concepts and terms given below. The
candidate is required to attempt any 10 short questions in 25-30 words each..
Each short question carries 2 marks.
(iii) Remaining part of the question paper will be divided into four units,
corresponding to the four units of the syllabus for each option. The paper
setter will set 2 essay type questions from each unit. The candidate will
attempt 4 essay type questions, selecting one from each unit. Each essay
type question will carry 15 marks.
(iv) The paper setter is expected to follow the Essential Readings and set
questions on the sub-themes or parts of a theme, rather than the topic as a
whole.

Concepts and Terms: Imperialism; Nationalism; Colonialism; Secularism; Nation-

in-the making; militant nationalism; communalism; non –cooperation; civil
disobedience; satyagraha; Home-Rule; Subaltern; Swadeshi; Praja Mandal; Gadhar;
Khudai Khidmatgars; Trade Unionism; Indian National Army; Partition;
Independence; Drain of Wealth; Swarajists; Moppila; Eka Movement; Khilafat
Movement; Non-violence; Secretary of State; Minto Morley Reforms; Montague
Chelmsford Reforms.

Unit I
Indian Nationalism 1859 – 1885;-Different historiographic schools of Indian
Nationalism: early associations and peasant uprisings 1859-1880s; theories of origin
and foundation of the Indian National Congress; social basis of the Indian National
Congress.

4
Unit II
National awakening in India in its early phase: National Awakening and Socio-
Religious Social Reforms; the Moderate phase of the Indian National Congress;
Partition of Bengal and Swadeshi; Growth of Extremism; Home Rule Movement.
Unit III
Nationalism under Gandhi’s leadership: emergence of Gandhi and his ideology of
mass participation; critical assessment of Non-cooperation and Khilafat Movement,
civil disobedience movement; 1940 Satyagraha and Quit India Movement; Freedom
Struggle in the princely states.

Unit IV
Other strands of the National Movement: Revolutionary Movement since 1905; Left
wing Politics and Youth Organizations; the Indian National Army; Communal
strands; Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha; last phase of the struggle; freedom
and partition why Congress and Gandhi accept partition.

Essential Readings
 Abel M, Glimpses of Indian National Movement, The ICFAI University Press,
India, 2005
 Bandyopadhyay Sekhar, Nationalist Movement of India: A Reader, Oxford
University Press, 2009
 Chandra, Bipan, Mridula Mukerjee, Aditya Mukerjee, K.N. Pannikar, Sucheta
Mahajan, India’s Struggle for Independence 1857-1947, New Delhi: Penguin
Books, 1989.
 Chandra Bipan, Nationalism and Colonialism in Modern India, Delhi: Orient
Longman, 1979.
 Chandra, Bipan, Communalism in Modern India, Vikas, New Delhi, 1984.
 Chandra Bipan, Indian National Movement: Long Term Dynamics, Har Anand
Publiction, New Delhi, 2010.
 D.N. Dhanagare, Agrarian Movements and Gandhian Politics, Oxford
University Press, 1970. Desai, A.R., Social Background of Indian Nationalism,
Bombay: Popular Parkashan, 1966.
 Guha, Ranjit, Subaltern Studies, I – IX, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982-
86.
 Jaffrelot Christophe, Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics 1925 to
the 1990s, Penguin Books, India, 1999
 Low, D.A. Britain and Indian Nationalism: The imprint of Antiquity, 1997
 Mahajan, Sucheta, Independence and Partition, New Delhi: Sage, 2000.
 Mehrotra, S.R., Emergence of Indian National Congress, Delhi: Manohar,
1971.
 Mehrotra, S.R., Towards India’s Freedom and Partition, New Delhi, 1979.

5
 Nanda, B.R., The Making of Indian Nation, Collins: Harper, 1998. Pathak,
B.N. (ed.), History of Indian National Congress, 3 vols., New Delhi, 1985.
 Singh, Anita Inder, The Origins of Partition of India, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1987.

Suggested Readings
 AICC, A Century History of the Indian National Congress, Vols. II & III.
 Aloysius, G., Nationalism without a Nation in India, Oxford University Press,
1998.
 B.R. Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography, Bombay: Allied Publishers,
1978.
 Chandra, Bipan, The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India, New
Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1982 (reprint).
 Farquhar, J.H., Modern Religious Movements in India, Delhi: Munshi Ram,
Manohar Lal, 1976.
 Gopal, S., British Policy in India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1965.
 Joshi, Shashi, and Josh, B., Struggle or Hegemony in India 1920-47, Vol. I to
III, New Delhi: Sage.
 Low, D.A. (ed.), Congress and the Raj, New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1977.
 Massellos, Jim, Nationalism on the Indian Subcontinent, Melbourne: Thomas
Nelson, 1972.
 Rai Lala Lajpat, Young India: An Interpretation and a History of Nationalist
Movement, Ocean Books Pvt Ltd., 2008
 Salil Misra, A Narrative of Communal Politics, UP 1937 -39. New Delhi: Sage,
2001.
 Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903-1908, New Delhi:
Macmillan, 1977.
 Tara Chand; History of the Freedom Movement in India, 2 Vols., Delhi:
Publication Division, 1963. Vishalakshi Menon, From Movement to
Government, Delhi: Sage India, 2005.

6
LESSON 1

HISTORIOGRAPHY OF INDIAN NATIONALISM

Structure
1.0. Objectives
1.1. Introduction
1.2. Historiography of Indian Nationalism
1.3. Colonial Historiography
1.4. Nationalist Approach
1.5. Marxist approach
1.6. Subaltern approach
1.7. Summary
1.8. References
1.9. Further Readings
1.10. Model Questions

1.0. OBJECTIVES
Students, after reading this lesson you will be able to:
 Understand various approaches to study of nationalism in India.
 Know about the multiple points of agreement and disagreement of
historians with each other.
 Gain knowledge about the significance so far as the interpretation of
the national movement is concerned.

1.1. INTRODUCTION
Students, this lesson will examine the historiography of Indian Nationalism.
The Indian nationalism has been a major historical phenomenon that led to the
achievement of independence by the most populous colony in the world. It had
historians in its support and criticism during its own time. In this lesson, we are
mainly concerned with some broad categories of interpretations like the
Colonial, Nationalist, Marxist and Subaltern approach.

7
1.2. HISTORIOGRAPHY OF INDIAN NATIONALISM
The historians of Indian nationalism have argued that the Indian political
nation did not exist prior to the establishment of British rule in India.
Nationalist leaders and historians have incessantly debated over whether
or not such a nation lay unselfconsciously embedded in Indian civilisation
and then gradually evolved through history. Prasenjit Duara has critiqued
such formulations as ‘teleological model of Enlightenment History’ that gives
the ‘contested and contingent nation’ a false sense of unity. There is,
however, as of now, little disagreement that the Indian nationalism that
confronted British imperialism in the nineteenth century and celebrated its
victory in the formation of the Indian nation-state in 1947 was a product of
colonial modernity. As the self-professed mission of the colonisers was to
elevate the colonised from their present state of decadence to a desired
state of progress towards modernity, it became imperative for the latter to
contest that stamp of backwardness and assert that they too were capable
of uniting and ruling themselves within the structural framework of a modern
state. The two fold challenge of nationalism in colonial India was to forge a
national unity and to claim its right to self-determination. India has various
forms of diversity in the form of region, language, religion, caste, and
ethnicity and so on. It was from this diversity that ‘a nation in making’, to use
the phrase of Surendranath Banerjee, one of the earliest architects of this
modern Indian nation. Agreement among historians, however, stops here.
How did the Indians actually ‘imagine’ their nation is a matter of intense
controversy and ongoing debate.

1.3. COLONIAL HISTORIOGRAPHY

The term ‘colonial historiography’ applied to (i) the histories of countries
under colonial domination, direct or indirect, during the period of colonial
rule; and (ii) the ideas and approaches commonly associated with historians
who were or are characterized by a colonialist ideology. In the nineteenth and
early twentieth century’s, many of the front ranking historians were British
colonial officials and the term colonial history, when used at all, referred to the
subject rather than the ideology embedded in that history. This ideology is
subjected to adverse criticism by the Nationalist, Marxist and Subalterns.
Beginning with James Mill’s History of British India, the colonialists' view could
be found in the works of many English historians. Mountstuart Elphinstone,
Henry Elliot, John Dowson, W.W. Hunter and Vincent Smith were some
important historians who provided overarching interpretations of Indian history.
The colonialist view rejected the idea of India as a nation. The diversity and
disunityof India were always emphasized by the colonialist thinkers as
8
justification for the colonial rule which was considered to have united it.
Between 1806 and 1818, James Mill wrote a series of volumes on
the history of India that had a formative influence on British imagination
about India. Mill had never been to India and the entire work was written on
the basis of his limited reading of books and reports by European authors on
India. He belonged to an influential school of political and economic thought,
i.e. the utilitarian, inspired by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham. His book
was entitled History of British India, its early volumes included a survey of
ancient and medieval India while the later ones were specifically about the
British rule in India. It had shortcomings from the point of view of
authenticity, veracity and objectivity. It contained a good deal of the
prejudices concerning India and its natives that many British officers
acquired in course of their stay. It promoted the idea of a superior modern
Western civilization which was most prominent in the writings of James Mill.
The Indian intelligentsia had identified and criticized this British writing.
The historical work that rivalled Mill’s in terms of its influence on the
nineteenth century mind was produced by Mountstuart Elphinstone in 1841.
He came to India in 1795 as a junior most civil servant in the East India
Company’s service and by 1801 had rapidly risen to the position of Assistant
to the Company’s Resident at the court of Peshwa Baji Rao. He retired as
the Governor of Bombay Presidency and devoted himself to the task of
writing a history of India. He was an empiricist and was far better equipped
and better informed than Mill when it came to writing a history of India. His
work History of Hindu and Muhammedan India (1841) became a standard
text in Indian universities (founded from 1857 onwards) and was reprinted
up to the early years of the next century. Elphinstone followed this up with
History of British Power in the East, a book that traced fairly systemically the
expansion and consolidation of British rule till Hastings administration. It
carried the idea that it was British who had unified India as a country was
commonly highlighted in the colonialist’s historical narratives. These writings
depict India as land of hostile and warring units since early days of colonial
rule.
W.W. Hunter, Herbert Risley and many others emphatically attempted
to prove it by segregating and classifying the country in innumerable tribes
and castes. When the Indian National Movement began emerging in the late
nineteenth century and matured during the twentieth century, the famous
British historians such as John Strachey and John Seeley asserted that it
was impossible to forge a nation in India because it has never had the
characteristics of a nation nor it could ever have it in future. According
to them, India was a conglomeration of different and often antagonistic religious,
9
ethnic, linguistic and regional groups which could never be welded into a nation.
Valentine Chirol’sIndian Unrest (1910) asserted that India was a mere
geographical expression and even this geography was forged by the British.
In his view, India was a variegated jumble of races and peoples, castes and
creeds which could never evolve into a nation, and which in fact, is “an
antithesis to all that the word ‘national’ implies”. In effect, India was ‘inhabited by
a great variety of nations’, ‘there are far more absolutely distinct languages
spoken in India than in Europe’ and ‘there are far more profound racial
differences between the Mahratta and the Bengali than between the German
and the Portuguese’. It was only the British rule which prevented these ancient
divisions from breaking out once more into open and sanguinary strife. Thus, for
him, the term ‘India’ was no more than a geographic creation by the British
for administrative purposes.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. Define the term ‘Colonial Historiography’?

b. Name four British colonial officers who contributed towards Colonial

historiography?

c. Who was appointed as the Governor of Bombay Presidency?

d. Who wrote Indian Unrest?

1.4. NATIONALIST APPROACH

Nationalist views on Indian nationalism and national movement were
formed in response to the colonialist view. While the nationalist writers
accepted some of the ideas present in colonialist historiography, they
strongly reacted against colonialist denigration of India and its people. In
contrast to the instrumentalist approach of many colonialist historians,
the nationalist historians adopted an idea-centric approach. They study the
10
process of nation- building, focused primarily on the supremacy of a
nationalist ideology and a national consciousness to which all other forms
of consciousness were assumed to have been subordinated. This
awareness of the nation was based on a commonly shared antipathy
towards colonial rule, a feeling of patriotism and an ideology rooted in a
sense of pride in India’s ancient traditions. This school, in other words,
ignored the inner conflicts within Indian society - which among other things,
led to its division into two nation states – and assumed the existence of a
nation as a homogenous entity with a single set of interests.
Many Indian nationalists and nationalist historians did not consider
India as a formed nation in modern times. They, in line with
SurendranathBanerjea, regarded India as a nation in the making. According
to them, the task of the national movement was to unite Indians from various
regions and different walks of life into a single nation based on their common
grievances. R.C. Majumdar argued that “the conception of India as a
common motherland was still in the realm of fancy. There was no India as it
is understood today. There were Bengalis, Hindustanis, Marathas, Sikhs etc.
but no Indian, at the beginning of the nineteenth century”. He thought that it
was the movements launched by the Congress which ‘gave reality to the
ideal of Indian unity’. Tara Chand also thought that creation of an Indian
nation was a recent phenomenon which emerged due to ‘the combined
economic and political change’.
Radha KumudMookerji, in his Fundamental Unity of India (1914) and
many other works, most famously put forward the idea that India had been
great and unified since ancient times. According to him, there had existed a
sense of geographical unity of India since early times, and even the idea of
nationalism was already present in early India. Har Bilas Sarda, in his Hindu
Superiority (1906), declared that “the ancient Hindus were the greatest
nation that has yet flourished in the earth”. Lajpat Rai asserted in his Young
India (1916) that “fundamentally India has been a nation for the last 2,000
years”.
K.P. Jayaswal, his Hindu Polity (1924), stated that India possessed
everything which modern Britain could claim: big empires, enduring and
successful republics, representation elective institutions, strong parliaments,
a constitutional monarchy, and supremacy of Law above the executive
authority.

11
Besides the spirit of freedom, the nationalist historians emphasised on
a variety of factors for the rise of national movement – the generally
unfriendly attitude of the colonial rulers, reactionary policies of Viceroy
Lytton, Ilbert Bill controversy, the modern education, printing press, modern
literature, and finally the partition of Bengal. The feeling of racial superiority
displayed by English people in India and the official policy of racial
discrimination in certain matters humiliated the Indians and created
bitterness in their minds.
The nationalist historians also underlined the economic factors which led
to a feeling of disaffection among Indian people. Exploitation of peasantry, high
land revenue, forced cultivation of indigo and some other cash crops, drain of
wealth, wasteful expenditure of Indian revenue for maintaining a large military
force to be used against the Indians or for fighting wars which did not really
concern India and so on.
The nationalist historians also pointed to the underlying contradiction
between the imperialist rule and the Indian people as a whole. By doing this,
they papered over all the class, caste, linguistic, regional and religious
contradictions which existed in Indian society in order to portray a pan-Indian
anti–imperialist front. According to nationalist historians, the national movement
was a movement of all classes in Indian society. Since Indian people as a whole
had a contradiction with imperialism, the national movement represented the
feelings of the Indian people against imperialism. Congress leader Pattabhi
Sitaramayya claimed “the Congress then is a Nationalist organization that
knows no difference between British India and Indian India, between one
province and another, between classes and masses, between towns and
villages, between the rich and the poor, between agricultural and industrial
interests, between castes and communities or religions”.
According to the nationalist historians' common belief, the masses
were not capable of independent action and were to be mobilised by the
middle class leaders. Surendranath Banerjee wrote in 1911 that “Wherever
you have a middle class, you have enlightenment, freedom, progress and
prosperity….the rise of the middle class in Bengal is therefore the most
remarkable and the most reassuring of the signs of the times”. Lajpat Rai
commented that “The masses are easily led astray by governments or by
classes in league with governments. In every country it is the educated
middle class that leads the movement for political independence or for
political progress”. C.F. Andrews and Girija Mukerji also wrote in 1938 in
their The Rise and Growth of the Congress in India that “The strength of the
All-India movement lay in the newly educated middle classes…..the
national movement, thus begun by the
12
Congress, represented both the social aspirations of the middle classes in
India and also the supreme desire for freedom and racial justice”.
The nationalist historians believed that the nationalist leaders were
dedicated idealists inspired by patriotism and the welfare of the country.
While coming from the middle classes, the nationalist leaders, in this view,
possessed no personal or group or class interests and were devoted to the
cause of the nation and Indian people. They represented all classes,
communities and groups and pursued national, secular and progressive
politics.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. What do you understand by Nationalist approach of historiography?
Answer.

b. Name two Nationalist historians who contributed towards Nationalist

School of historiography?
Answer.

c. What were the economic factors which led to a feeling of disaffection

among Indian people?
Answer.

1.5. MARXIST APPROACH

The Marxist historians have been critical of both the colonists and
nationalist views on Indian nationalism. They criticise the colonialist perspective
for holding a discriminatory view on India and its people, while they criticise the
nationalist commentators for seeking the roots of nationalism in the ancient
past. They criticise both for not paying attention to economic factors and class
differentiation in their analysis of the phenomenon of nationalism.
The Marxist school sought to analyse the class character of the nationalist
movement and tried to explain it in terms of economic developments of the
colonial period, primarily the rise of industrial capitalism and the development of
a market society in India. It identified the bourgeois leadership, which directed
this movement to suit their own class interests and neglected the interests of the
masses and even to some extent betrayed them. They believe that India was
not always a nation but rather a nation which was being

13
created in modern times in which the nationalist movement had an important
role to play.
M.N. Roy, a great figure in the national and international communist
movement during the 1920s, placed the Indian nationalist movement within a
universalistic framework. In his book, India in Transition (1922), he argued that
this movement had developed at a certain juncture in the development of
international capitalism. He was of the opinion that India was moving towards
capitalism and had already come within the ambit of global capitalism. Thus, the
dominant classes in India were not feudal lords but the bourgeoisie. In the
context of feudal dominance, the emerging national bourgeoisie is often
revolutionary. However, in India, since feudalism was approaching its end, the
bourgeoisie had turned conservative in nature and wanted to preserve the
existing order. In this situation, only the workers would be revolutionary.
On the issue of Indian nationalism, Roy believed that it was the political
ideology of native capitalism which developed in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century in the shadow of imperialism. It matured along with the growth
of native capital after the First World War. This period also witnessed the
rise of the Indian National Congress. Thus, for Roy, Indian national movement
represented the “political ideology and aspiration of a youthful bourgeoisie”.
After twenty five years, R.P. Dutt formulated the most influential
Marxist interpretation of Indian nationalism in his famous book India Today
(1947). Dutt held that the revolt of 1857 “was in its essential character and
dominant leadership the revolt of the old conservative and feudal forces
and dethroned potentates”. Thus it is only from the last quarter of the 19th
century that Dutt traced the beginning of the Indian national movement. The
Indian National Congress established in 1885, was the main organisation
of this movement. Dutt believed that although the previous activities of the
Indian middle classes formed the background, the Congress came into
existence “through the initiative and under the guidance of direct British
government policy, on a plan secretly pre-arranged with the Viceroy as an
intended weapon for safeguarding British rule against the rising forces of
popular unrest and anti-British feeling”. However, Dutt argues that owing to
pressure of popular nationalistic feelings, the Congress slowly abandoned
its loyalist character and adopted a national role. This resulted in its
transformation as a strong anti-colonial force which began to lead people’s
movement against colonial rule.
While analysing the study of Indian nationalism by applying the Marxist
class, he argues that the class base of the Congress and the national

14
movement changed over the period. Thus, in the initial years, Indian nationalism
represented “only big bourgeoisie – the progressive elements among the
landowners, the new industrial bourgeoisie and the well-to-do intellectual
elements”. In addition to this, he argues that the leadership remained in the
hands of the propertied classes who remained most influential in the
Congress. These elements prevented any radicalisation of the movement which
could become dangerous to their own interests. He is particularly harsh on
Gandhi whom he castigates as the “the mascot of the bourgeoisie”. He asserts
that the Non-cooperation movement was withdrawn because the masses were
becoming too militant and a threat to the propertied classes within and outside
the Congress. The Civil Disobedience Movement met with a similar fate when it
was “suddenly and mysteriously called off at the moment when it was reaching its
height” in 1932. According to Dutt, the Congress had a “twofold character” which
persisted throughout its history. It was because of the very nature of the Indian
bourgeoisie. On the one hand, its contradictions with imperialism prompted it to
lead the people’s movement against colonial government. But, on the other
hand, its fear of a militant movement, which could jeopardise its interests and
privileges, drew it back into cooperation with imperialism. It, therefore, played a
vacillating role throughout the period of the national movement. Dutt’s work
proved to be a trendsetter in Marxist historiography on Indian national
movement. The latter works of the Marxist historians were in some measures
influenced by it.
A.R. Desai’s Social Background of Indian Nationalism (1948) is
another thoroughgoing account of the colonial period and the rise of
nationalism from a Marxist perspective. According to Desai, the Indian
national movement developed through five phases. Each phase was based
on particular social classes which supported and sustained it. In the first
phase, the Indian national movement was basically initiated and supported
by the intelligentsia who were the product of the modern English system of
education. This phase, which began with Raja Rammohan Roy and his
followers, continued till 1885 when the Indian National Congress was
founded. Now a new phase began which extended until 1905 when the
Swadeshi movement emerged. In this phase, the national movement
represented the interests of the new bourgeoisie which had started
developing in India, although it was still in its infancy. The modern education
had created a middle class, the development of the Indian and international
trade had given rise to a merchant class, and the modern industries had
created a class of industrialists. Thus, in its new phase, Indian national
movement took up the demands of the educated classes and the trading
bourgeoisie such as the Indianisation of Services, the association of the
Indians with the administrative machinery of the state, the stoppage of
15
economic drain, and others formulated in the resolutions of the Indian National
Congress.
The third phase of the national movement started with the Swadeshi
movement and continued till 1918. During this phase, the national movement
covered a relatively broader social base which included ‘sections of the
lower – middle class’. In the fourth phase, which covered the period from the
Rowlatt Satyagraha to the end of the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1934,
the social base of the national movement expanded enormously. The
movement, which was until now confined mainly to the upper and the middle
classes, now began to encompass certain sections of the masses. However,
according to Desai, the leadership of the Congress remained in the hands of
those who were under the strong influence of the Indian capitalist class.
From 1918 onwards, the industrial bourgeoisie “began to exert a powerful
influence in determining the programme, policies, strategies, tactics and
forms of struggle of the Indian national movement led by the Congress of
which Gandhi was the leader”. Two other significant developments during
this period were the rise of the Left groups since the late 1920s, which
tried to introduce a pro-people agenda in the national movement, and the
consolidation of communal forces which sought to divide the society. In the
fifth phase (1934-39), there was a growing disenchantment with the
Gandhian ideology within the Congress and the rise of the Congress
Socialists who represented the petty bourgeois elements. Outside the
Congress, movements of the peasants, workers, depressed classes and
various linguistic nationalities had developed. The divisive ideology of
communalism had also grown in influence. However, according to Desai, all
these stirrings were not of much consequence and the mainstream was still
solidly occupied by the Gandhian Congress which represented the interests
of the dominant classes.
R.P. Dutt and A.R Desai’s works initiated the Marxist thinking on
Indian National Movement. They presented it as a movement dominated by
the bourgeoisie. They say that although various classes, including the
peasantry and the working classes, participated in it, its basic character
remained bourgeois. This view of national movement remained quite
common among the Marxist historians for quite some time.
Bipan Chandra in his book TheRise and Growth of Economic
Nationalism in India (1966), emphasised on the important role of ideas and
argued that ideas are not created directly from particular modes of
production, even though the latter shape them. Thus, certain autonomy must
be given to the ideas as a significant vehicle of action and change. It is
true, he says, that “Social relations exist independently of the ideas men form
16
of them” but men’s understanding of these relations is crucial to their social and
political action. Moreover, he argues that the intellectuals in any society stand
above the narrow interests of the class in which they are born. It is “sheer crude
mechanical materialism” to define the intellectuals only on the basis of their
origins in particular classes or groups. It is because the intellectuals are guided
“at the level of consciousness, by thought and not by interests”. Therefore, the
Indian nationalist leaders, as intellectuals, were acting above the interests of the
narrow class or group they were born in. This does not mean, however, that
they did not represent any class. But this was done at an ideological level
and not for personal gain.
Bipan Chandra concludes that their overall economic outlook was
“basically capitalist”. He means that “In nearly every aspect of economic life
they championed capitalist growth in general and the interests of the
industrial capitalists in particular”. This does not mean that they were working
for the individual interests of the capitalists. In fact, the capitalist support for
the Congress in the early phase was negligible. Nationalist support for
industrial capitalism derived from the belief of the nationalists that
“industrial development along capitalist lines was the only way to regenerate
the country in the economic field, or that, in other words, the interests of the
industrial capitalist class objectively coincided with the chief national interest
of the moment”. Thus by abandoning the instrumentalist approach espoused
by Dutt and Desai, Bipan Chandra began a major change in perspective in
the Marxist historiography of the Indian National Movement.
However, despite this change in perspective, Bipan Chandra remained
anchored to several points of the paradigm developed by R.P. Dutt. In an
essay, ‘Elements of Continuity and Change in the Early Nationalist Activity’,
there were many points where his arguments resembled those of Dutt and
Desai. Firstly, he interprets the “peaceful and bloodless” approach of
struggle adopted by the nationalist leadership as “a basic guarantee to
the propertied classes that they would at no time be faced with a situation in
which their interests might be put in jeopardy even temporarily”. This
understanding of non-violence was the same as that of Dutt and Desai.
Secondly, he argues that the relationship between the Indian masses and
the nationalist always remained problematic. For the moderate leaders, the
masses had no role to play. Even the extremists, despite their rhetoric,
failed to mobilise the masses. Although the masses came into nationalist
fold during the Gandhian period, they were not politicised and the lower
classes of agricultural workers and poor peasants in most parts of the
country were never politically mobilised, so that the social base of the
national movement was still not very strong in 1947. And even when they
were mobilised, the masses remained outside the decision-making process
17
and the gulf between them and the leaders was ‘unbridged’. According to
him, “the political activity of the masses was rigidly controlled from the top.
The masses never became an independent political force. The question of
their participation in the decision-making process was never even raised”.
Thirdly, the nationalist leaders in all phases of the movement stressed that
the process of achievement of national freedom would be evolutionary
and not revolutionary. The basic strategy to attain this goal would be
pressure- compromise-pressure. In this strategy, pressure would be brought
upon the colonial rulers through agitations, political work and mobilisation of
the people. When the authorities were willing to offer concessions, the
pressure would be withdrawn and a compromise would be reached. The
political concessions given by the colonial rulers would be accepted and
worked. After this, the Congress should prepare for another agitation to gain
new concessions. It is in this phased, non-violent manner that several
political concessions would be taken from the British and this process would
ultimately lead to the liberation of the country.
Bipan Chandra concluded that the nationalist movement as represented
by the Congress was “a bourgeois democratic movement, that is, it represented
the interests of all classes and segments of Indian society vis-a vis imperialism
but under the hegemony of the industrial bourgeoisie”. This character remained
constant throughout its entire history from inception to 1947. Even during the
Gandhian phase, there was no change. In fact, according to Bipan Chandra, the
hegemony of the bourgeoisie over the national movement was, if anything,
even more firmly clamped down in the Gandhian era than before.
In India’s Struggle for Independence, 1857-1947 (1988), Bipan
Chandra has decisively moved away from the views of Dutt and Desai on
Indian national movement. Most of the propositions regarding the Indian
National Congress developed in the earlier quoted article are now
abandoned. The Congress strategy is no longer seen in terms of pressure-
compromise-pressure. It is now viewed in terms of Gramscian ‘war of
position’ whereby a prolonged struggle is waged for the attainment of a goal.
As Bipan Chandra puts it: The Indian national movement ...is the only
movement where the broadly Gramscian theoretical perspective of a war of
position was successfully practised; where state power was not seized in a
single historical moment of revolution, but through prolonged popular
struggle on a moral, political and ideological level; where reserves of
counter–hegemony were built up over the years through progressive stages;
where the phases of struggle alternated with ‘passive’ phases. This struggle
was not violent because the nationalist leaders were concerned with fighting
against imperialism as well as welding India into a nation. In the course of a
protracted struggle fought at both intellectual and political levels, the nationalist
18
leaders wished to show that the colonial rule was not beneficial to the Indian
people nor was it invincible. The Gandhian non- violence also is now
reinterpreted. Thus, it was not considered as a mere dogma of Gandhi nor
was it dictated by the interests of the propertied classes. It was an essential
part of a movement whose strategy involved the waging of a hegemonic
struggle based on a mass movement which mobilised the people to the
widest possible extent. The national movement was now conceived as an all
class movement which provided space and opportunity for any class to build its
hegemony. Moreover, the main party, the Congress, is now regarded not as a
party but a movement. In this way, Bipan Chandra now makes a clear break
from the conventional Marxist interpretation of the Indian national movement.
The Marxist perspective on Indian nationalism is therefore informed by a class
approach related to politics and ideology. The basic position is that the
nationalist leadership and the nationalist ideology objectively and subjectively
represented the Indian bourgeoisie and wanted that India should evolve on the
path of independent capitalist development.
Self-Assessment Questions
a. What do you understand by Marxian school?

b. Who was M.N. Roy?

c. Define the term ‘Capitalism’?

1.6. SUBALTERN APPROACH

The scholars associated with the journal Subaltern Studies shot into fame
by vehemently criticising all other forms of Indian history writing during the
closing decades of the last century. They put forward their own
interpretation of modern history as a whole, particularly of Indian nationalism. In
1982, the first volume of the Subaltern Studies, edited by Ranajit Guha, was
published, with a provocative opening statement: “The historiography of Indian
nationalism has for a long time been dominated by elitism”. This “blinkered
historiography”, he goes on to say, cannot explain Indian nationalism,
because it neglects “the contribution made by the people on their own, that
is, independently of the elite to the making and development of this
nationalism”. This radical school, which derives its theoretical inputs from the
19
writings of the Italian, Antonio Gramsci, thinks that organised national
movement which ultimately led to the formation of the Indian nation states
was hollow nationalism of the elites, while real nationalism was that of the
masses, whom it calls the “subaltern”. There was a “structural dichotomy”
between the two domains of elite politics and that of the subalterns, as the
two segments of Indian society lived in two completely separate and
autonomous, although not hermetically sealed, mental worlds defined by
two distinct forms of consciousness. Although the subalterns from time to
time participated in political movements initiated by the bourgeoisie, the
latter failed to speak for the nation. The bourgeois leadership, Ranajit Guha
argued that it failed to establish its hegemony through either persuasion or
coercion, as it was continually contested by the peasantry and the working
class, who had different idioms of mobilisation and action, which the
nationalist movement failed to appropriate. The new nation-state established
the dominance of this bourgeoisie and its ideology, but it was “dominance
without hegemony”.
In his essay ‘The Prose of Counter-Insurgency’, Ranajit Guha
launched a scathing attack on the existing peasant and tribal histories in
India for considering the peasant rebellions as “purely spontaneous and
unpremeditated affairs” and for ignoring the consciousness of the rebels
themselves. He accused all the accounts of rebellions, starting with the
immediate official reports to the histories written by the left radicals, of
writing the texts of counter-insurgency, which refused to recognise the
agency of the people and to acknowledge the insurgents as the subject of his
own history. According to Guha, they all failed to acknowledge that there
existed a parallel subaltern domain of politics which was not influenced by
elite politics and which possessed an independent, self-generating dynamic.
Its roots lay in pre-colonial popular social and political structures.
Subaltern historiography has undergone considerable shifts in recent
years, with the focus moving from class to community, from material analysis to
the privileging of culture, mind and identity. Sumit Sarkar has raised complaints
in the “decline of the subaltern in Subaltern Studies”. This is because gradually
its focus has expanded from an exclusive preoccupation with forms and
instances of subaltern protest to an incorporation of the politics of the colonial
intelligentsia as well. “Elite and dominant groups can also have a subaltern
past”, argues Dipesh Chakrabarty as a justification for this shift in focus. It
has been argued, following Edward Said (1978) that their subalternity was
constituted through the colonisation of their mind, which constructed their
subjectivity. As for an understanding of nationalism of these subordinate
colonial elites, the most important contribution has come from Partha
Chatterjee. His earlier assertion was that nationalism in India was essentially

20
a “different” but “derivative discourse” from the West that developed through
three distinct stages: the “moment of departure” when the nationalist
consciousness was constructed through the hegemonizing influence of the
“post –Enlightenment rationalist thought”, the moment of manoeuvre when
the masses were mobilised in its support, and the “moment of arrival” when it
became “a discourse of order” and “rational organization of power”. This
theory has been further developed in his later book The Nation and Its
Fragments (1993), where he has argued about two domains of action of this
intelligentsia – the material and the spiritual. In the inner spiritual domain
they tried “to fashion a ‘modern’ national culture that is nevertheless not
Western” and here they refused to allow colonial intervention; it was here
that nationalism was already sovereign. In the outer material world, defined
by the institutions of the colonial state, there was however little scope for
them to avoid the influence of Western models. In the outer world the Indian
elite contested the colonial rule of difference, while in the inner domain they
sought to homogenise Indian society by producing consent and dominating
the space of subaltern dissent. So the two domains of elite and subaltern
politics should now be studied not in their separateness, Chatterjee
persuades us, but in their “mutually conditioned historicity’s”.
The subaltern view of nationalism is being described as a major strand
in ‘post-colonial’ theory – has witnessed development in Gyan Prakash’s
most recent book Another Reason (1999) where he has argued– in partial
revision of Chatterjee – that “there was no fundamental opposition between
the inner- sphere of the nation and its outer life as a nation state, the latter
was the former’s existence at another, abstract level”. The fashioning of the
nation-state in India was no mere emulation of the Western model, as
thought by Chatterjee, but thinking and critiquing of the Western modernity
from the vantage point of India’s spiritual-cultural heritage, combined with a
scientific approach. This state, as contemplated by leaders like Jawaharlal
Nehru, would be guided by the Indian principles of ethical conduct that
privileged collective good and in this sense, it would not be a ‘Western
import.’ However, this very reliance on the state emanated from their failure
to achieve national unity, which they had only visualised at a discursive
level. Thus, as Prakash argues, “the nation – state was imminent in the
very hegemonic project of imagining and normalizing a national
community” and herein lay the concentration of Indian nationalism.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. What do you know about Subaltern School?
Answer.

21
b. In which year, the first volume of Subaltern Studies published?
Answer.

c. Who wrote Another Reason?

Answer.

d. Name two Subaltern historians who contributed towards the Subaltern

School of Historiography?
Answer.

1.7. SUMMARY
Students, in this lesson we have dealt with different schools of
historiography of Indian nationalism. The colonialist view on Indian nation
and nationalism disregarded the possibility of India ever becoming a nation.
It, moreover, considered the national movement of narrow self-interest led
by a microscopic English- educated minority. According to this view, this
small middle– class section of the population would never be able to form a
nation out of the disparate assemblage of innumerable castes, linguistic and
regional groups. The nationalist historians strongly reacted against this
negative characterisation of Indian people. They completely rejected the
colonialist idea that India could never be formed into a nation. In fact, many
of them argued, India always possessed the potential to be forged into a
nation, and it did happen at several points in the past. Although they did not
deny the role of modern Western ideas, many of these historians argued
that India had an underlying cultural unity since the most ancient times.
The nationalist historians also regarded the national movement as a pan-
Indian movement encompassing all classes and groups led by idealist and
selfless leaders. The Marxists historians laid emphasis on an understanding
of the role of economic factors and classes in the making of the nation as
well as a movement. According to them, although the national movement
was an expression of the basic antagonism between the Indian people and
imperialist government, it was a movement either directly influenced by
bourgeoisie or indirectly working in the direction of capitalist development.
The Subaltern historians underline the existence of a strong popular
nationalism which was autonomous and more militant than the organised
22
and official nationalism.

1.8. REFERENCES

Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and

Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century,Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1968. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition:
A History of Modern India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Nationalist Movement in India: A Reader, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009.

1.9. FURTHER READINGS

Bipan Chandra, et al., India’s Struggle for Independence, 1857-1947, New

Delhi: Penguin Books, 1988.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 1983.
C.A. Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical
Government in the Making of Modern India, Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1998.
Elie Kedouri, Nationalism, London: Wiley Blackwell, 1960.
Mushirul Hasan (ed.), India’s Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization,
Delhi: OUP, 1993.

1.10. MODEL QUESTIONS

1. Discuss in detail about the Nationalist School of Historiography of

Indian nationalism?
2. Explain in detail about the Marxist School of Historiography of Indian
nationalism?
3. How do the Subaltern historians view the phenomenon of Indian
nationalism?
4. Explain different approaches of Historiography of Indian nationalism?
5. Discuss the interpretation of Indian nationalism given by the Colonialist
School?

23
CHAPTER 2

EARLY ASSOCIATIONS AND PEASANTS UPRISINGS

1859-1880

Structure
2.0. Objectives
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Peasants Uprisings 1859-1880’s
2.3. Indigo Revolt (Neel Bidroho)
2.4. Pabna Revolt
2.5. Deccan Riots
2.6. Changed Nature of Peasant Movements after 1857
2.7. Role of Early Political Associations
2.8. Summary
2.9. References
2.10. Further Readings
2.11. Model Questions

2.0. OBJECTIVES

Students, after reading this chapter you will be able to:

● Learn about the major peasants uprisings between the years 1859-80.
● Learn about the role played by the intelligentsia (through Early
Associations) in supporting their cause.
● Learn about the changed nature of the peasant movements after the
Revolt of 1857.

2.1. INTRODUCTION
Students, after reading this lesson you will be able to understand in
detail the various reasons responsible for the peasant uprising between the
years 1859- 1880. During this period three major peasant uprisings took
place, i.e. the Indigo Revolt, Pabna Revolt, and Deccan Riots. So, the nature
of the peasants' problems, the methods adopted to solve them, and the
outcome of their agitations has been discussed in detail. This chapter also
examines the supportive role played by the various early associations and
middle class intelligentsia in nationalizing their local causes.

2.2. PEASANTS UPRISINGS 1859-1880

When the elites of the Indian society were busy initiating social reforms to
24
change their society from within to answer the moralistic critiques of the
West, the rural society was responding to the imposition of colonial rule in an
entirely different way. In contrast to the urban intelligentsia, who were also the
chief beneficiaries of colonial rule, the response of the traditional elite and the
peasantry, who were losing out as a result of imposition of colonial rule, was
that of resistance and defiance, resulting in a series of unsuccessful
attempts at restoring the old order. Not that peasant revolts were unknown in
Mughal India; indeed, they became endemic in the first half of the
eighteenth century as the rising revenue demands breached the Mughal
compromise and affected the subsistence provision of the peasants, and
the Mughal provincial bureaucracy became ever more oppressive and
rigorous in collecting it. The tendency became even more pervasive as the
colonial regime established itself, enhanced its power and introduced a series
of revenue experiments, the sole purpose of which was to maximize its
revenue income. Apart from this, the peasants suffered from high rents,
illegal levies, arbitrary evictions, and unpaid labour in Zamindari areas. The
overburdened farmer, fearing loss of his only source of livelihood, often
approached the local moneylender who made full use of the former’s
difficulties by extracting high rates of interest on the money lent. Often, the
farmer had to mortgage his hand and cattle. Sometimes, the moneylender
seized the mortgaged belongings. Gradually, over large areas, the actual
cultivators were reduced to the status of tenants-at-will, share-croppers and
landless labourers. The ruination of handicraft industries led to the
overcrowding of land, added to the situation. Therefore, in the second half of
the nineteenth century peasant protests became quite common throughout
India. Let us discuss some peasant movements which mainly stretched from
1859 to 1890.

2.3. INDIGO REVOLT (NEEL BIDROHO)

The most militant and widespread of the peasant movements was the
Indigo Revolt of 1859-60. It was the first major uprising in the post-East India
Company era. Indigo, as a natural blue dye for textiles, emerged as one of the
most important cash crops for the British traders in the late 18th and first
half of the 19th century due to its huge demand in Europe at a time when the
textile industry was booming due to Industrial revolution, and it was called “blue
gold”. European planters enjoyed a monopoly over indigo and they forced
Indian cultivators to grow indigo on their best lands instead of the more paying
crops like rice by signing fraudulent deals with them. Indigo plantations
functioned on a system of Dadan, i.e., advance given by planters to peasants
on high rates of interest to buy and sow seeds on their lands. He was forced to
accept this advance and was compelled to cultivate indigo. The price paid for
25
the indigo plants was far below the market price. The farmers were brutally
oppressed if they failed to pay the rent. If a farmer refused to grow indigo
and planted paddy instead, the planters resorted to illegal means to get the
farmer to grow indigo such as kidnapping, illegal confinement in factory
godowns, flogging, attacks on women and children, carrying off cattle,
looting, burning and demolition of houses and destruction of crops and fruit
trees. They also hired or maintained bands of Lathyals (armed retainers) for
the purpose. In practice, the planters were also above the law. With a few
exceptions, the Magistrates, mostly European, favoured the planters with
whom they dined and hunted regularly. Those few who tried to be fair were
soon transferred. The oppression of the planters increased in the second
half of the nineteenth century as indigo lost its economic importance as an
export item and the Union Bank, which was the chief financier for the
planters, failed in 1847. The magnitude of the crisis was evident from the
decline by 44.3 per cent in the indigo exports between 1855 and 1861-62.
The unfavourable return from indigo became the main reason for revolt.
The discontent of indigo growers in Bengal boiled over in the autumn of
1859 when their case seemed to get government support. Misreading an official
letter and exceeding his authority, Hem Chandra Kar, Deputy Magistrate of
Kalaroa, published on 17 August a proclamation to policemen that “In case of
disputes relating to Indigo Ryots, they (Ryots) shall retain possession of their
own lands, and shall sow on them what crops they please, and the police
will be careful that no indigo planter nor anyone else be able to interface in the
matter”. The news of Kar’s proclamation spread all over Bengal, and peasants
started asserting their right not to grow indigo under duress and resisted the
physical pressure of the planters and their Lathiyals backed by the police and
the courts.
When such reluctance became widespread, the Planters’ Association
in Calcutta persuaded the government to enact an infamous law — Act XI of
1860, which made breach of contract on the part of the Ryots a criminal
offence. The planters took full advantage of this law and their oppression
became severe in Nadia and Jessore districts of Bengal. The district
officials also joined the planters in this oppression. But the Ryots were
determined and they felt that the time for overthrowing the hated system
had come.
The beginning was made by the Ryots of Govindpur village in Nadia
district when, under the leadership of Digambar Biswas and Bishnu Biswas, ex-
employees of a planter, they gave up indigo cultivation. And when, on 13
September, the planter sent a band of 100 Lathyals to attack their village, they
organized a counter force armed with Lathis and spears and fought back. The
peasant disturbances and indigo strikes spread rapidly to other areas. The

26
peasants refused to take advances and enter into contracts, pledged not to
sow indigo, and defended themselves from the planters’ attacks with
whatever weapons came to hand — spears, slings, Lathis, bows and
arrows, bricks, Bhel-fruit, and earthen-pots (thrown by women). The indigo
strikes and disturbances flared up again in the spring of 1860 and
encompassed all the indigo districts of Bengal. Factory after factory was
attacked by hundreds of peasants and village after village bravely defended
itself. In many cases, the efforts of the police to intervene and arrest peasant
leaders were met with an attack on policemen and police posts. They also
gradually learnt to use the legal machinery to enforce their rights. They
joined together and raised funds to fight court cases filed against them, and
they initiated legal action on their own against the planters. They also used
the weapon of social boycott to force a planter’s servants to leave him.
Ultimately, the planters could not withstand the united resistance of the
Ryots, and they gradually began to close their factories. The cultivation of
indigo was virtually wiped out from the districts of Bengal by the end of 1860.
A major reason for the success of the Indigo Revolt was the tremendous
initiative, cooperation, organization and discipline of the Ryots. Another was the
complete unity among Hindu and Muslim peasants. Leadership for the
movement was provided by the more well-off Ryots and in some cases by petty
Zamindars, moneylenders and ex-employees of the planters. Missionaries were
another group which extended active support to the indigo Ryots in their
struggle.
Dinabandhu Mitra’s Nil Darpan (Indigo Mirror), published in 1860, also
lucidly portrayed the havoc caused by indigo planters on the lives of indigo
cultivators. The novel was translated into English by Michael Madhusudan
Dutt and published by Rev. James Long of the Church Missionary Society.
The trial, by the Supreme Court, of James Long on grounds of libel and the
fine of 1,000 imposed on him, caused indignation among intellectuals.
Newspapers, such as the Hindoo Patriot and the Somprakash, and
organizations, such as the Indian Association, came to the support of
James Long. Although they appealed to the British sense of justice for the
redress of the situation, their involvement brought peasant problems into the
realm of institutional politics and to the notice of political circles in India and
England. The planters had to relent, and indigo cultivation died a natural
death.
The intelligentsia of Bengal also organized a powerful campaign in
support of the rebellious peasantry. It carried on newspaper campaigns,
organized mass meetings, prepared memoranda on peasants’ grievances
and supported them in their legal battles. Outstanding in this respect was
the role of Harish Chandra Mukherji, editor of the Hindoo Patriot. He
27
published regular reports from his correspondents in the rural areas on
planters’ oppression, officials’ partisanship and peasant resistance. He
himself wrote with passion, anger and deep knowledge of the problem which
he raised to a high political plane. Revealing an insight into the historical and
political significance of the Indigo Revolt, he wrote in May 1860: “Bengal
might well be proud of its peasantry.....Wanting power, wealth, political
knowledge and even leadership, the peasantry of Bengal have brought
about a revolution inferior in magnitude and importance to none that has
happened in the social history of any other country . . . With the Government
against them, the law against them, the tribunals against them, the Press
against them, they have achieved a success of which the benefits will
reach all orders and the most distant generations of our countrymen”.
The Government’s response to the Revolt was rather restrained and
not as harsh as in the case of civil rebellions and tribal uprisings. It had just
undergone the harrowing experience of the Santhal uprising and the Revolt
of 1857. It was also able to see, in time, the changed temper of the
peasantry and was influenced by the support extended to the Revolt by the
intelligentsia and the missionaries. It appointed a commission to inquire into
the problem of indigo cultivation. Evidence brought before the Indigo
Commission and its final report exposed the coercion and corruption
underlying the entire system of indigo cultivation. The result was the
mitigation of the worst abuses of the system. The government issued a
notification in November 1860 that Ryots could not be compelled to sow
indigo and that it would ensure that all disputes were settled by legal means.
But the planters were already closing down the factories they felt that they
could not make their enterprises pay without the use of force and fraud.

2.4. PABNA REVOLT

Large parts of East Bengal were engulfed by agrarian unrest during the
1870s and early 1880s. Pabna (now in Bangladesh) was a jute production and
trading centre and was relatively prosperous. The unrest was caused by the
efforts of the Zamindars to enhance rent beyond legal limits along with the
illegal cesses or Abwabs. But the main grievance of the peasantry was against
the continuous and united attempts of the Zamindars to prevent the tenants
from acquiring occupancy rights given to them under the Rent Act X of 1859.
The peasants were no longer in a mood to tolerate such oppression. The Pabna
rebellion was different from most contemporary peasant rebellions. This
movement began as the peasants organised an agrarian league in May
1873 in the Yusufshahi Pargana of Pabna to resist the demands of the
Zamindars. The peasants were much more organised than in other revolts via
meetings, appeals and marches through villages frightening the Zamindars
28
and appealing to other peasants to join them. They moved to the court and
challenged the Zamindars, and raised funds to meet the cost of legal battle
and also occasionally withheld rent. The Ryots developed a strong
awareness of the law and their legal rights and the ability to combine and
form associations for peaceful agitation. The movement remained largely
non-violent and within the bounds of law, with a profound faith in the British
justice system. A few cases of violence occurred when the Zamindars tried
to compel the Ryots to submit to their terms by force. Similar movements
were reported during the next decade from a number of neighbouring east
Bengal districts (Dacca, Mymensingh, Tripura, Backergunj, Faridpur,
Bogura and Rajshahi).
Though peasant discontent smouldered till 1885, many of the disputes
were settled partially under official pressure and persuasion and partially
out of the Zamindar‘s fear that the united peasantry would drag them into
prolonged and costly litigation. Many peasants were able to acquire
occupancy rights and resist enhanced rents. The government rose to the
defence of the Zamindars wherever violence took place. Peasants were then
arrested on a large sale. But it assumed a position of neutrality as far as
legal battles or peaceful agitations were concerned. The government also
promised to undertake legislation to protect the tenants from the worst
aspects of Zamindari oppression, a promise it fulfilled however imperfectly in
1885 when the Bengal Tenancy Act was passed.
Once again the Bengal peasants showed complete Hindu-Muslim
solidarity, even though the majority of the Ryots were Muslim and the
majority of Zamindars Hindu. The three principal leaders of the agrarian
league being the petty landholder Ishan Chandra Roy, the village headman
Shambhu Pal (both caste Hindus), and the Muslim Jotedar Khoodi Mollah.
There was also no effort to create peasant solidarity on the grounds of
religion or caste. In this case, too, a number of young Indian intellectuals
supported the peasants’ cause. These included Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
and R.C. Dutt. Later, in the early I880s, during the discussion of the Bengal
Tenancy Bill, the Indian Association, led by Surendranath Banerjee, Anand
Mohan Bose and Dwarkanath Ganguli, campaigned for the rights of tenants,
helped form Ryot’ unions, and organized huge meetings of up to 20,000
peasants in the districts in support of the Rent Bill. The Indian Association
and many of the nationalist newspapers went further than the Bill. They
asked for permanent fixation of the tenant’s rent. They warned that since
the Bill would confer occupancy rights even on non-cultivators, it would lead
to the growth of middlemen — the Jotedars — who would be as oppressive
as the Zamindars so far as the actual cultivators were concerned. They,
therefore, demanded that the right of occupancy should go with actual

29
cultivation of the soil, that is, in most cases to the under Ryots and the
tenants-at-will.

2.5. DECCAN RIOTS

A major agrarian outbreak occurred in the Poona and Ahmednagar districts
of Maharashtra in 1875. Like the peasants in other Ryotwari areas, the Deccan
peasant also found it difficult to pay land revenue without getting into the
clutches of the Sahukars (people who were both traders and moneylenders)
and increasingly losing his land. This led to growing tension between the
peasants and the moneylenders most of whom were outsiders — Marwaris or
Gujaratis. The creation of property in land got the moneylenders interested
in grabbing the land of defaulting peasants. They increased the interest rate on
credit given to peasants and acquired their mortgaged lands through a court
decree, if the cultivator failed to pay back.
Peasant indebtedness became a serious problem in the rural areas due
to other reasons as well. In 1861, civil war broke out in the USA. The USA
was the largest supplier of cotton to Britain. Once the civil war broke out, the
demand for cotton from India became high and this led to a surge in cotton
cultivation in India and there was a period of ‘boom’ then. However, once the
war in America ended, cotton demand sank and this affected the farmers
adversely. Simultaneously, in 1867, the government raised land revenue by
nearly 50 per cent. The situation was worsened by a succession of bad
harvests. The result was widespread indebtedness. The cultivators’ appeals for
revision of the rate of land revenue were bolstered by support from members
of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, middle-class intellectuals abreast of ‘modern’
methods of politics. The concession granted by the Bombay government—that
annexation of peasants’ land by moneylenders would only happen if the
‘movable’ properties of the peasant were not enough to cover the amount
loaned— further worsened relations between cultivators and Sahukars giving
rise to Deccan riots.
The riots first broke out on 12 May 1875 at a Supa village in the district of
Pune and soon it spread to other villages in Poona and Ahmednagar districts. A
wide area, about sixty-five kilometres north to south and a hundred kilometres
east to west was affected by the disturbances. The uprising began at Supa
village in the district of Poona. Contrary to the idea of spontaneous,
unconscious, aimless violence associated with rioting, the peasants
demonstrated definite purpose and intent in destroying the debt bonds, the
symbol and instrument of the moneylenders’ power over them. Everywhere the
Gujarati and Marwari moneylenders were attacked by farmers. They burnt
the debt bonds and looted their grain shops. They also torched the houses
of Sahukars. The farmers were led by the village headmen. The farmers’

30
main motive was to destroy the account books of the moneylenders and they
resorted to violence only when these books were not handed over to them.
They also socially boycotted the moneylenders. The movement continued
for 2 months and spread to over 30 villages. It took several months for the
police to restore order in the countryside. The Bombay government initially
dismissed the uprising as trivial. However, the Government of India
pressured Bombay to inquire into the matter. Accordingly, the Deccan Riots
Commission was set up which presented a report to the British Parliament in
1878. In 1879, the Agriculturists Relief Act was passed which ensured that
the farmers could not be arrested and imprisoned if they were unable to pay
their debts.
Peasant resistance also developed in other parts of the country.
Moplah outbreaks were endemic in Malabar region of South India. They
were not only directed against the British but also against the Hindu
landlords. Vasudev Balwant Phadke, an educated clerk, raised a Ramosi
peasant force of about 50 in Maharashtra during 1879, and organized social
banditry on a significant scale. The Kuka Revolt in Punjab was led by Baba
Ram Singh and had elements of a messianic movement. It was crushed
when 49 of the rebels were blown up by a cannon in 1872.

2.6. CHANGED NATURE OF PEASANT MOVEMENTS AFTER 1857

There was a certain shift in the nature of peasant movements after
1857. Princes, chiefs and landlords having been crushed or co-opted,
peasants emerged as the main force in agrarian movements. They now
fought directly for their own demands, centered almost wholly on economic
issues, and against their immediate enemies, foreign planters and
indigenous Zamindaris and moneylenders. Their struggles were directed
towards specific and limited objectives and redressal of particular
grievances. They did not make colonialism their target. Nor was their
objective the ending of the system of their subordination and exploitation.
The territorial reach of these movements was also limited. They were
confined to particular localities with no mutual communication or linkages.
They also lacked continuity of struggle or long- term organization. Once the
specific objectives of a movement were achieved, its organization, as also
peasant solidarity built around it, dissolved and disappeared. Thus, the
Indigo strike, the Pabna agrarian leagues and the social-boycott movement
of the Deccan Ryots left behind no successors. Consequently, at no stage
did these movements threaten British supremacy or even undermine it.

31
Peasant protest after 1857 often represented an instinctive and
spontaneous response of the peasantry to its social condition. It was the
result of excessive and unbearable oppression, undue and unusual
deprivation and exploitation, and a threat to the peasant’s existing,
established position. The peasant often rebelled only when he felt that it was
not possible to carry on in the existing manner. He was also moved by
strong notions of legitimacy, of what was justifiable and what was not. That
is why he did not fight for land ownership or against landlordism but against
eviction and undue enhancement of rent. He did not object to paying
interest on the sums he had borrowed; he hit back against the fraudulent
methods of the moneylender and when the latter went against tradition in
depriving him of his land. He did not deny the state’s right to collect a tax on
land but objected when the level of taxation overstepped all traditional
bounds. He did not object to the foreign planter becoming his Zamindar but
resisted the planter when he took away his freedom to decide what crops to
grow and refused to pay him a proper price for his crop.
The peasant also developed a greater awareness of colonial policies,
laws and institutions and what is more important, some of them even
embraced those institutions, the law courts for example, as an extended and
legitimate space for venting their anger or for seeking redress to existing
injustices. The other important feature was the growing involvement of the
educated middle- class intelligentsia as spokespersons for the aggrieved
peasantry, thus adding new dimensions to their protests and linking their
movements to a wider agitation against certain undesirable aspects of
colonial rule.
In these movements, the Indian peasants showed great courage and a
spirit of sacrifice, remarkable organizational abilities, and a solidarity that cut
across religious and caste lines. They were also able to bring considerable
concessions from the colonial state. The latter, too, not being directly
challenged, was willing to compromise and mitigate the harshness of the
agrarian system though within the broad limits of the colonial economic and
political structure. In this respect, the colonial regime’s treatment of the post-
1857 peasant rebels was qualitatively different from its treatment of the
participants in the civil rebellions, the Revolt of 1857 and the tribal uprisings
which directly challenged colonial political power.
A major weakness of the 19th century peasant movements was the
lack of an adequate understanding of colonialism — of colonial economic
structure and the colonial state — and of the social framework of the
movements themselves. Nor did the 19th century peasants possess a new
ideology and a new social, economic and political programme based on an
analysis of the
32
newly constituted colonial society. Their struggles, however militant, occurred
within the framework of the old societal order.
They lacked a positive conception of an alternative society — a
conception which would unite the people in a common struggle on a
wide regional and all-India level and help develop long-term political
movements. An all-India leadership capable of evolving a strategy of struggle
that would unify and mobilize peasants and other sections of society for
nation-wide political activity could be formed only on the basis of such a new
conception, such a fresh vision of society. In the absence of such an
ideology, programme, leadership and strategy of struggle, it was not difficult
for the colonial state, on the one hand, to reach a conciliation and calm
down the rebellious peasants by the grant of some concessions arid on the
other hand, to suppress them with the full use of its force. This weakness
was, of course, not a blemish on the character of the peasantry which was
perhaps incapable of grasping on its own the new and complex
phenomenon of colonialism. That needed the efforts of a modern
intelligentsia which was itself just coming into existence.
Most of these weaknesses were overcome in the 20th century when
peasant discontent was merged with the general anti-imperialist
discontent and their political activity became a part of the wider anti-
imperialist movement. And, of course, the peasants’ participation in the
larger national movement not only strengthened the fight against the
foreigner it also, simultaneously, enabled them to organize powerful
struggles around their class demands and to create modern peasant
organization.

2.7. ROLE OF EARLY POLITICAL ASSOCIATIONS

The formation of political associations to put forward demands of
Indians to British government marked the beginning of new political
consciousness of Indians. The new intelligentsia played a significant role in
these associations. The intelligentsia did not initially question the legitimacy
of the continuation of British rule, but by 1870s their faith in British
governance was shaken because of several famines caused by British rule.
Dadabhai Naoroji and Ramesh Chunder Dutt strongly criticised economic
exploitation of India by British rule. It is argued that as the Charter of
English East India Company was going to expire in 1853 and British
officials were reviewing conditions in India before the renewal of the Charter,
so, the educated Indians took this opportunity to form provincial associations
to put forward their demands. Students, let us discuss them.
The Zamindari Association, also known as the Landholders Society,
was established by Dwarkanath Tagore in Calcutta in 1838 to safeguard
33
the class interests of the landlords of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. It marked
the beginning of organized political activity and used constitutional methods
for agitating and redressal of their grievances. In 1843, another political
association under the name of the Bengal British Indian Society was
founded with the objective to foster good citizenry qualities among the Indian
populace, create public awareness about the state of governance and about
their civil rights. It preached loyalty to the government and use of peaceful
methods for achieving them. It was more broad based in its aim, it focused
on the rights of peasants also.

In 1851, both the Landholders Society and the Bengal British India
Society merged to form the British Indian Association at Calcutta. It was
formed by the Zamindars of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, and was the earliest
public organisation to mobilise people for the political cause. The British
Indian Association with members from landed gentry and new intelligentsia
drew the attention of British authority through petitions to London and local
authorities to protect the interests of Indians and give more share of public
office for Indians. It submitted a list of grievances, which afterwards
became a part of the Congress objectives. Its list of grievances demanded
relaxation of pressure of the revenue systems, the improvement of judicial
administration, the protection of the life and property of the people from
molestation, relief from the monopolies of the East India Company,
encouragement to indigenous manufacture, and education of the people
etc.
British Indian Association at Calcutta (1851), the Bombay Association
(1852) in Bombay and Madras Native Association (1852) in Madras, were
formed with the objectives to appeal British parliament for protecting
interests of Indians. These three presidency associations made almost
identical demands. What they wanted was a greater participation in the
administration of their own country and what they complained against were
the perplexing “dual system” of government, expensive and incompetent
administration, legislations unresponsive to the feelings of the people, high
taxation, salt and opium monopolies and the neglect of education and public
works. They were not against British rule as such, but felt, as the Calcutta
petition made it dear, that they had “not profited by their connection with
Great Britain, to the extent which they had a right to look for”.
In 1867, Mahadeva Govinda Ranade formed the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha
for social reforms and national awakening. One of its main objectives was to
improve the plight of the poor peasants. It supported the cultivators’ appeals for
revision of the rate of land revenue during the Deccan riots of 1875. It also
sent volunteers to the villages to arouse the Kunbi peasants against the new

34
rates. Pressurised by this, the Bombay government now granted a major
concession, that in case of a failure to pay revenue, first the movable
properties of a peasant would be attached; his land would be put up for
auction only if his movable properties proved to be insufficient.
The Indian Association established under the leadership of Surendra
Nath Banerjee and Anand Mohan Bose in 1876 also carried out agitation in
favour of protection of the tenants from oppression by the Zamindars. During
1883-85 it organized popular demonstrations of thousands of peasants to
get the Rent Bill changed in favour of the tenants. Transcending the ties of
family, caste, religion and locality...these associations were the first overt
sign of a social and political revolution in the sub-continent. During the
Indigo Revolt it supported Rev. James Long of the Church Missionary
Society who was tried by Calcutta Supreme Court for publishing Neel
Darpan (literally Blue Mirror), which depicted the atrocities of the indigo
planters in the boldest possible colour.
All these provincial associations which came up after the 1850s in
spite of having its limited social base and limited objectives marked the
beginning of the process of political awakening and gave momentum to political
activity. These associations provided confidence to Indians to organise political
opposition to the mighty British rulers.
Various political organizations tried to harness peasants’ force for its
struggle against British rule. But Ranajit Guha has argued that peasant
movements of the earlier period should not be looked at as the “pre-history
of the Freedom Movement”; they have a history of their own. In the late
nineteenth century a section of the western-educated middle class were
trying to project themselves as the leaders of the nation, representing the
grievances and interests of all sections of the Indian population, including the
peasants. Guha and other subaltern historians have argued that peasants were
capable of organising themselves and could articulate their own grievances;
intervention of the outside elite leaders was only to appropriate these
movements for their own political benefits. Only rarely such middle-class
leaders exhibited the same radicalism as that of the peasantry. A major
exception perhaps was Vasudeo Phadke, who in 1879 gave leadership to an
armed peasant revolt in the villages to the southwest of Poona. But everywhere
else, as Hardiman has emphasised, their “enterprise was carried on in a
spirit of compromise and timidity”. But despite this alleged frailty, these urban
middle-class leaders performed an important role: they tried to connect the
localised and isolated peasant and tribal movements to a wider struggle
against the undesirable aspects of colonial rule. They acted as crucial channels
of communication between the peasants and the colonial state- a role, which
the traditional peasant leadership was no longer equipped enough to

35
perform effectively.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. Explain the Rent Act X of 1859?
Answer.

b. Who wrote Nil Darpan?

Answer.

c. Who founded the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha?

Answer.

d. Write two causes of peasants uprising between the years 1859-90.

Answer.

2.8. SUMMARY
Students, in this lesson we learnt about the emergence of the peasants as the
main force in agrarian movements, fighting directly for their own demands. The
demands were centred almost wholly on economic issues. The movements
were directed against the immediate enemies of the peasant—foreign planters
and indigenous Zamindars and moneylenders. The struggles were directed
towards specific and limited objectives and redressal of particular grievances.
Colonialism was not the target of these movements. It was not the objective of
these movements to end the system of subordination or exploitation of the
peasants. Territorial reach was limited. There was no continuity of struggle or
long-term organisation. The peasants developed a strong awareness of their
legal rights and asserted them in and outside the courts. The early political
associations tried to connect the localised and isolated peasant and tribal
movements to a wider struggle against the undesirable aspects of colonial rule.
They acted as crucial channels of communication between the peasants and
the colonial state- a role, which the traditional peasant leadership was no longer
equipped enough to perform effectively.

36
2.9. REFERENCES
Bipin Chandra, India’s Struggle for Independence: 1857-1947, New
Delhi: Penguin Books, 1988.
Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885-1947, New Delhi: Macmillan, 1983.

2.10. FURTHER READINgS

A.R. Desai (ed.), Peasant Struggles in India, Bombay: Oxford University
Press, 1979.
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern
India, New Delhi: Orient Black Swan, 2004.
Ishita Banerjee Dube, A History of Modern India, Delhi: Cambridge
University Press, 2014.

2.11. MODEL QUESTIONS

1. Discuss the reasons for Indigo Revolt and the role of Ryots and
intelligentsia in its success.
2. Discuss the nature of early peasants uprisings between 1859-1890.

37
LESSON 3

THEORIES OF ORIGIN AND FOUNDATION OF THE

INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS AND ITS
SOCIAL BASE

Structure
3.0. Objectives
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Political Associations in Pre-Congress Days
3.3. Foundation of Indian National Congress and Safety Valve Theory
3.4. Social Base of Indian National Congress
3.5. Summary
3.6. References
3.7. Further Readings
3.8. Model Questions

3.0. OBJECTIVES
Students, after reading this chapter you will:
 learn about the circumstances leading towards the origin of India’s
first all India national party, i.e., the Indian National Congress.
 be able to critically analyse the formation of Indian National Congress.
 know about the social basis of the Indian National Congress.

3.1. INTRODUCTION
Students, this lesson will examine the role played by the regional political
organizations in preparing the ground for the formation of Indian National
Congress. We will be critically analyzing the birth of Indian National Congress
and theories related to its origin. Further a discussion will be made on the social
basis of the Indian National Congress.

3.2. POLITICAL ASSOCIATIONS IN PRE-CONGRESS DAYS

The English system of education, though conceived by the rulers in the
interests of efficient administration, opened to the newly educated Indians
the floodgates of liberal European thought. The liberal and radical thoughts
of European writers like John Locke, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Milton
Shelley, John Stuart Mill, Rousseau and Voltaire instilled in Indian minds the
notions of liberty, equality, patriotism, and self-government. As a result of the
exposure to such ideas, Indians began to recognize the need for political

38
change. The formation of number of political organizations in the pre-
Congress days that manifested itself largely in the 1860’s and 1870’s, arose
partly as a response to western education and culture, increasing influence
of free press, by the progress of railways, posts and telegraph, which broke
down the internal barriers and facilitated union for a common purpose.
These political organizations made an important contribution in terms of
arousing the political consciousness amongst the Indians. However, most of
them had limited objectives and their influence remained confined to their
respective regions only. They mainly picked up local issues and their
members and leaders also remained limited to adjoining provinces.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy was the pioneer of political movement in India.
He was the first one to focus the attention of the Englishmen on the
grievances of India and to ask for remedial measures. He demanded civil
rights, spread of western system of education, liberty of press, codification of
laws, appointment of Indians on higher posts etc. The first political
association called BangabhashaPrakashika Sabha was formed in 1836 by
the associates of Raja Ram Mohan Roy.
The Zamindari Association, also known as the Landholders Society,
was established by Dwarkanath Tagore in Calcutta in 1838 to safeguard the
class interests of the landlords of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. It marked the
beginning of organized political activity and used constitutional methods for
agitating and redressal of their grievances. In 1843, another political
association under the name of the Bengal British Indian Society was
founded with the objective to foster good citizenry qualities among the Indian
populace, create public awareness about the state of governance and about
their civil rights. It preached loyalty to the government and use of peaceful
methods for achieving them.
In 1851, both the Landholders Society and the Bengal British India Society
merged to form the British Indian Association. It submitted a list of grievances,
which afterwards became a part of the Congress objectives. Its list of
grievances demanded relaxation of pressure of the revenue systems, the
improvement of judicial administration, the protection of the life and property
of the people from molestation, relief from the monopolies of the East India
Company, encouragement of indigenous manufacture, education of the people
and the admission of the Indians to the higher administrative services. It also
demanded that in future two-thirds of Indian Legislative Council's
representatives should be the Indians.
In order to present the correct information about India to the British
public and voice Indian grievances in British press, DadabhaiNaoroji
established the East Indian Association in 1866 in London. Later he
organized branches of the Association in prominent Indian cities. In 1867,
39
Mahadeva Govinda Ranade formed the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha for social
reforms and national awakening. One of its main objectives was to act as a
bridge between the government and the people of India. It brought out a
quarterly journal under the guidance of Justice Ranade. This journal became
the intellectual guide of new India particularly on the economic questions. In
1875, the Indian League was founded by Sisir Kumar Ghose with the object
of stimulating the sense of nationalism amongst the people and of
encouraging political education.
The most important of the pre-Congress nationalist organizations was
the Indian Association established under the leadership of Surendra Nath
Banerjee and Anand Mohan Bose in 1876. It rivaled the long-standing British
Indian Association, which it regarded as a reactionary body of landlords
and industrialists. It set before itself the aims of creating a strong public
opinion in the country on political questions or against the unjust policies of
the British government and the unification of the Indian people on a common
political programme. In order to attract large numbers of people to its
banner, it fixed a low membership fee for the poorer classes. The first major
issue it took up for agitation was the reform of the Civil Service regulations. It
opposed the reduction of the qualifying age for appearing in the Indian Civil
Service Examination from twenty-one to nineteen. Surendra Nath Banerjee
toured different parts of the country during 1877-78 in an effort to create an
all-India public opinion on the raising of the age limit for its examination. The
Indian Association also carried out agitation against the Arms Act and the
Vernacular Press Act and in favour of protection of the tenants from
oppression by the Zamindars. During 1883-85 it organized popular
demonstrations of thousands of peasants to get the Rent Bill changed in
favour of the tenants. It also agitated for better conditions of work for the
workers in the English-owned tea plantations where conditions of near-
slavery prevailed. Many branches of the Association were opened in the
towns and villages of Bengal and also in many towns outside Bengal. But it
failed to become an all-India body.
In 1881, the Madras Mahajan Sabha was founded by M.
Veeraraghavachariar, P. Anandacharlu, and B. SubramaniaAiyer. It felt the
necessity of creating an organization at an all-India level to relieve and free
the nation from the clutches of British rule and redress the grievances of
Indians.They strongly expressed this idea in the Theosophical Society
Conference held at Adyar, which was attended by many patriots and
leaders, who materialized it later by forming, the Indian National Congress
in 1885.
In 1885, the Bombay Presidency Association was formed under the
leadership of persons like K.T. Telang, Ferozeshah Mehta, and Badruddin

40
Tayabji as a result of the reactionary policies of Lytton and the Ilbert Bill
controversy, which caused political disturbances in Bombay.
Despite good leaders like DadabhaiNaoroji, Surendranath Banerjee,
Ananda Charlu and others, all these associations failed in bringing any
desired result because of their regional outlook and lack of coordination and
unity. To establish effective coordination amongst all the organizations a
need was felt to have a national body. The Hindu newspaper also wrote,
“Time has come when the people of India should assert their rights with all
the strength of a national movement”. Therefore, an attempt was made to
bring in representatives from all over India to a common platform. The Indian
Association organized All-India National Conferences twice in 1883 and
1885. Thus, the political associations and activities in the pre-Congress
period in India and abroad regarding the Indian freedom struggle made it
mandatory to form an all-India association that would lead the country
against the foreign rulers.

3.3. FOUNDATION OF INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS AND SAFETY

VALVE THEORY
Students, from the above discussion it is clear that the foundation of the
Indian National Congress was not a sudden event. It was the culmination of
political work which spearheaded itself in the previous years between 1860s
and 1880s. The Indians had gained experience as well as confidence from
the large number of agitations that they had organized on national issues
like since 1875, there had been a continuous campaign around the import
duties which Indians wanted to stay in the interests of the Indian textile
industry. Then in 1877-80, a massive campaign was organized around
the demand for Indianization of the civil services and against Lord Lytton’s
expensive Afghan adventures, the cost of which had to be meant from the
Indian revenues. The Indian press and associations also organized a
campaign against the Vernacular Press Act of 1878. Indians had also
opposed the effort to disarm them through the Arms Act. In 1881-82, they
organized a protest against the Plantation Labour and Inland Emigration
Act, which reduced the plantation labour to serfdom. In July 1883, a
massive all-India effort was made to raise a National Fund which would be
used to promote political agitation in India as well as in England. In 1880’s,
Indians fought for the right to join the Volunteer Corps restricted to
Europeans, and then organized an appeal to the British voters to vote for
those candidates who would be friendly towards India.
In 1883-84, the Ilbert Bill was passed, which allowed the Indian judges to
try Europeans accused of crime. The introduction of the bill led to intense

41
opposition in Britain and from British settlers in India. To fight against it all
European members stood united against the bill. Finally, Lord Ripon had to
modify the bill and once again the Europeans could be tried by the members of
their own race. The Ilbert Bill controversy proved to be an eye-opener to the
Indian intelligentsia. This made the Indians realize that they have failed because
of lack of broad resistance. It became clear to them that justice and fair play
could not be expected where the interests of the European community are
involved. Further, it demonstrated the value of organized agitation.
So, formation of an all-India political organization became an objective
necessity, which could streamline the geographically vast and diverse country to
get rid of the alien rule. British asserted that India cannot be united because
it is a mere ‘geographical expression’ while nationalist asserted that ‘India is a
nation in making’, for which it has to be constantly developed and consolidated.
To accomplish this, there is a need for a national body. The year 1885 marked a
turning point in this process, for that was the year the political Indians, the
modern intellectuals interested in politics, no longer saw themselves as
spokesmen of narrow group interests, but as representatives of national
interests vis-a-vis foreign rule. The all-Indian national body that they wanted to
bring into being was to be the platform, the organizer, the headquarters, the
symbol of the new national spirit and politics.
When the Indian nationalist leaders in the different parts of the country
were moving towards the formation of an all-India political body, Hume's (a
retired English civil servant) enthusiastic support hastened its birth. In March
1883, Hume wrote a provocative letter to the graduates of the Calcutta
University in which he asked for fifty volunteers to join in a movement to
promote the social, moral, mental, and political regeneration of the people of
India. He encouraged them “to form a Union, to organize and to follow a
well- defined line of actions with sufficient power of self-sacrifice, sufficient
love and pride in their country, who would be willing to devote the rest of their
life to the cause”. He also emphasized, “Scattered individuals however
capable and however well meaning, are powerless singly”. He warned that if
such men were not forthcoming there would be “no hope for India”. In 1884,
Hume in consultation with the other Indian nationalist leaders, created Indian
National Union which would be affiliated with the government and act as a
platform to voice Indian public opinion.
Hume then proceeded to England to take counsel with other well-
wishers of India. Assured of their help, he returned to India, to participate in
the conference convened by the Indian National Union at Poona from 25-28
December 1885. As the conference had received support from all parts of
India, on the suggestion of DadabhaiNaoroji, its name was changed to
'Indian National Congress'. The venue of the meeting was shifted to Bombay

42
as Poona became infected with Cholera. The first session of the All-India
Congress began on 28December 1885 at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College.
Eminent barrister of Calcutta, Womesh Chandra Banerjee presided over it.
Seventy-two invited delegates from different parts of India assembled in
this first session. Hume was elected as the first General Secretary of the
Indian National Congress. The Bombay Presidency Association helped in
the arrangements of the Congress.
Was Congress the Child of British Raj?
The foundation of the Indian National Congress was a political
phenomenon of supreme importance in the history of India. Its formation by an
Indian would have been accepted as normal and logical but by an Englishman
(Hume) and an ex-civil servant of the British government, had given rise to
many speculations and has invited various theories about its origin over the
period of time. There are several theories associated with the formation of the
Indian National Congress of which 'safety valve’ theory is the most debated
one.
There is a widespread belief of ‘safety valve’ theory behind the origin
of the Indian National Congress. It is said, while in service Hume had come
across a mass of material which suggested that as a result of growing
sufferings of masses and alienation of intellectuals, much discontent has
accumulated, and this could pose a threat to the continuance of British rule
in India. He also felt that the government was dangerously out of touch with
the people and there was no recognized channel of communication between
the rulers and the ruled, no constitutional means of keeping the government
informed of the Indian public opinion and their needs. In his communication
to Northbrook in 1872 he wrote, “Your Lordship can hardly realize the
instability of our rule…. the fate of the Empire is trembling in the balance
and that at any moment, some tiny scarcely noticed cloud may grow and
spread over the land a storm raining down anarchy and devastation”.
Also, according to William Wedderburn, biographer of Hume, Hume
was in touch with some Mahatmas with telepathic powers who told him that
another rebellion like 1857 would happen if the political aspirations of
Indians are not fulfilled. With memories of the Great Revolt of 1857 still
afresh, he wanted to provide a ‘safety valve’ through which the rising
revolutionary potential would be nipped in the bud. Therefore, Hume met
Lord Dufferin, the then Governor-General of India, in Shimla in early 1885
and decided to form an all-India association. He was of the opinion that this
association could be consulted by the British government to assess the
Indian public opinion on various issues of national interest. To this end,
Hume was able to convince Lord Dufferin not to obstruct the formation of
all-India association. Lord Dufferin agreed as he was also anxious to know

43
about the real political aspirations of the Indian masses.
Many radical or extremists’ leaders like Lala Lajpat Rai, RSS chief
M.S. Golwalkar and many others believed that Congress was started by
Hume and others under the official direction of Lord Dufferin, to provide a
‘safety valve’ against the growing discontent amongst the masses. Radicals
also used this theory to attack Indian National Congress for its loyalty
towards the British, secularism, politics of prayers and petitions and lack
of any concrete achievements. Lala Lajpat Rai called Indian National
Congress as the “brainchild of Lord Dufferin”. He also wrote that “The main
idea behind its formation was not just to save the British Empire but also
to strengthen it”.
R.P. Dutt also commented that “The Congress was the result of a pre-settled
and secret plan of the British government”. However, the Liberals welcomed this
theory of ‘safety valve’ as this idea allowed no unnecessary bloodshed.
It will not be correct to trace the genesis of the Indian National
Congress to a single individual like Hume or to think that it appeared all
of a sudden. This view has been disputed by modern Indian historians. They
argue that the formation of Indian National Congress was not a ‘sudden’ or
an ‘isolated’ event in the Indian political history, as already discussed, since
1860s many regional political associations were active in India like Poona
Sarvajanik Sabha, Indian Association, Madras Mahajan Sabha, Bombay
Presidency Association etc., which served as the precursor for the
formation of such all-India association, as the former were all localized in
practice. Indian National Congress represented the urge of politically
conscious Indians to set up a national body to express the political and
economic demands of the Indians.
Recent researches have proved that Hume was an enlightened
imperialist. He was truly alarmed at the growing gulf between the ruled and
the rulers. The theory of ‘safety valve’ is discarded on the basis of historical
evidences. One of which is a letter written by the Governor-General against
the political intervention by the Congress, while Hume was in a favour of
political reforms. The criticism of the Congress by the British officials proves
that there was no love for the Congress in the government circles. In 1888,
Lord Dufferin himself openly castigated the Congress and criticized it as a
“microscopic minority”, thus, debunking the ‘safety valve’ theory. Lord
Hamilton, the Secretary of State, expressed to Lord Elgin his delight that the
Congress is steadily going down and he is of the opinion that it is a seditious
body, and its leaders are of doubtful character. Lord Curzon, the big
supporter of imperialism remarked, “My own belief is that the Congress is
tottering to its fall, and one of my great ambitions while in India is to assist it
to a peaceful demise”. Many British officers criticized the Congress as a

44
body of ‘Baboos’, an organization of unhappy educated youths and a
mischievous organization.
Another narrative asserts that the formation of Indian National Congress
was a logical outcome of the trends in nationalistic activism that grew as a result
of English education, incorporation of western liberal concepts of free speech,
right to form associations, democracy, fundamental rights and justice and
equality.
National leaders like DadabhaiNaoroji, Ferozeshah Mehta,
Surendranath Banerjee also cooperated with Hume because they assumed
that if Indians would come forward to start such a movement, authorities
would have found some way to suppress them. Even Gokhale, with his
characteristic modesty and political wisdom stated this explicitly in 1913 that
“No Indian could have started the Indian National Congress....if an Indian
had come forward to start such a movement embracing all India, the officials
in India would not have allowed the movement to come into existence. If the
founder of the Congress had not been a great Englishman and a
distinguished ex-official, such was the distrust of political agitation in those
days that the authorities would have at once found some way or the other to
suppress the movement”.
So, if Hume and other English hoped to use Congress as a ‘safety
valve’, then under these circumstances the early Congress leaders decided
to use Hume as a ‘lightning conductor’, i.e., as a catalyst to safely bring
together the nationalistic forces even if under the guise of a ‘safety valve’.
Its nature of birth didn’t affect its functioning or from realizing its
objectives of promotion of national unity and creation of a common political
platform. As some envisaged that Indian National Congress was acting as a
‘safety valve’ and serving the interests of imperialists, but it is equally true
that Indians with the help of the British formed a platform to fight against the
British in an organized manner or else British would have completely
suppressed the movement as it had been in the case of 1857 revolt.

3.4. SOCIAL BASE OF INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS

The Indian National Congress was formed at a national convention held in
Bombay in December 1885. The circular sent out in March 1885 to inform
political workers of the coming Congress session affirmed that the Congress
intended “to enable all the most earnest labourers in the cause of national
progress to become personally known to each other”. W.C. Banerjee, the first
President of the Congress, declared the Congress’s goal to be the “eradication,
by direct friendly personal intercourse, of all possible race, creed, or provincial
prejudices amongst all lovers of our country” and to strive for the
consolidation of a sense of national unity. The Congress (which took its name

45
from the US Congress), was organized in the form of a Parliament. Its sessions
were conducted democratically on the basis of discussions and votes on
important issues.
Despite such professed aims, the Congress suffered from a number of
limitations, the major one related to its composition or uneven representation
and total exclusion of the non-elite groups of Indian society. The composition
of the delegates at the first Congress reflected almost accurately the
changing patterns of organised political life in India, the western educated
professional groups gradually took the lead over the landed aristocrats. In
the first session the numberof delegates were only seventy-two. Dufferin
described the all-India Congress as the body representing only a
“microscopic minority of India’s vast population”. He maintained that it
represented only the English-educated class of the Indians in which more
than half were lawyers, and the remainder consisted of journalists,
businessmen, landowners, and professors. So, the early Congress was
primarily composed of urban elites, professionals and some landed gentry,
who were high-caste Hindus. The membership of the Congress mirrored the
shifts in organized political life: Bombay superseded Calcutta in leadership,
and professionals replaced landed aristocrats. If we look at their regional
distribution, of the 72 non-official Indian representatives who attended the first
Congress session, 38 came from Bombay, 21 from Madras, and only four from
Bengal as the Indian Association had organized its own annual convention in
Calcutta around the same time and leaders from Bengal were apprised of the
Congress session at the very last moment. The three towns of Punjab sent a
representative each, and the four principal towns of the North- Western
Provinces and Awadh sent seven members. In other words, despite lofty claims,
it was a gathering of professionals, some landlords and businessmen,
representing primarily the three presidencies of British India. In their social
composition too, the members of the early Congress belonged predominantly to
the high caste Hindu communities. The disparity in representation and social
composition had serious repercussions on the programme and performance of
the Congress.
But its pattern changed in the very next year, 434 representatives who
attended the second session of the Congress in 1886 belonged to different
classes and different parts of India. To broaden the base of the Congress,
leaders of different communities were invited to preside over its annual
sessions. The first President of the Congress was an Indian Christian, W.C.
Banerjee; second was a Parsi, DadabhaiNaoroji; third one was a Muslim,
Badruddin Tyabji; and the fourth and fifth were two Englishmen, George
Yule and William Wedderburn, respectively. This helped Congress to gain a
national character representing all. The Muslim community was divided and

46
a section under the leadership of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan actively opposed
the Congress after 1886. Even then, the number of Muslim delegates
increased from 2 at Bombay to 33 at Calcutta and 81 in Madras. In 1890, at
the sixth session, there were 156 Muslims out of 702 delegates or 22
percent.
In 1890, Kadambini Ganguli, the first woman graduate of the Calcutta
University, was the first female speaker in the Congress session. This was
symbolic of the fact that India’s struggle for freedom would raise Indian
women from the degraded position to which they had been reduced for
centuries past. In 1917, Annie Besant became the first woman President of
the Indian National Congress, followed by Sarojini Naidu in 1925 and
Nellie Sengupta in 1933. Thus, emphasis its national character in every
sense.
For a long time, the claim of the Congress to be considered a
national organization was disagreed by its critics. Some called it a ‘Bengali
Congress’, others nicknamed it ‘Hindu Congress’ or ‘Seditious Brahmins’,
while some denounced it as an organization of the ‘Educated minorities’ in
the country. But a look into the nature of its membership and its aims and
objects indicates that the Congress was a cosmopolitan organization. The
early resolutions and programmes of the Congress revealed that it was
interested not only in the betterment of one or two particular classes of India
but in the uplift of all. By the end of the 19th century, its message reached
every nook and corner of the country. Even though the leadership was
confined to the middle- class intellectuals, it raised voices on behalf of the
masses of India. Thus, this Congress turned to be a broad based one, liked
and supported by the masses. The statement of Lord Dufferin “Congress as
a microscopic minority” turned false. A.R. Desai, in his book Social
Background of Indian Nationalism has accepted the national character of
Indian National Congress. Even, Gandhiji, at the time of the Second Round
Table Conference expressed the national character of the Congress. He
emphasized, “It represents no particular class, no particular interests. It
claims to represent all Indian interest and classes”.
From its very inception, the Indian National Congress also tried to
eliminate the regional differences. It gave representation to the people of
different parts of India belonging to different walks of life. The decision to
hold the Congress session every year in different parts of the country and to
choose the President belonging to a region other than the one where the
session was being held, was meant to break the regional barriers and
misunderstandings.

3.5. SUMMARY

47
Students, in this lesson we have learnt that the emergence of the Indian
National Congress in 1885 was not a sudden event, or a historical accident.
It marked the culmination of a long process of evolution of political ideas and
process of organization which spearheaded between 1860’s and 70’s. The
important role played by A. O. Hume, a retired British civil servant in the
formation of the Congress, had for a long time caused confusion and
disagreement among historians regarding its nature and purpose. It was
believed that the Congress had been set up by Hume in consultation with
Viceroy Lord Dufferin, in order to control the restive lower classes that were
planning to overthrow British rule by force. The Congress, an organization of
educated Indians, was to act as a safety-valve by being the mediator
between the rulers and the ruled. This theory originated from Hume’s
biography written by William Wedderburn. Although the theory has been
disproved, the fact of Hume’s active involvement in the formation of the
Congress still holds true but Hume’s participation is mostly accepted as a
political liberal who wanted an all-India body to voice Indian opinion and act
as an opposition. From what we have discussed earlier, it is also clear that no
one man or group of men can be given credit for creating this movement. By
this time the educated Indians were getting ready to form such an organization
themselves to work for their political and economic advancement. The Indian
leaders, who cooperated with Hume in starting this National Congress, were
patriotic men of high character who willingly accepted Hume’s help as they did
not want to arouse official hostility towards their efforts at so early a stage of
political activity. From its very beginning Congress had a very decent beginning.
In the first session the number of delegates were only seventy-two. Dufferin
described the all-India Congress as the body representing only a “microscopic
minority of India’s vast population”. To broaden the base of the Congress,
leaders of different communities were invited to preside over its annual
sessions. The Indian National Congress also tried to eliminate the regional
differences. It gave representation to the people of different parts of India
belonging to different walks of life. The decision to hold the Congress
session every year in different parts of the country and to choose the President
belonging to a region other than the one where the session was being held, was
meant to break the regional barriers and misunderstandings.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. Who was A.O. Hume?
Answer.

b. Explain why Lord Dufferin criticized Congress as “microscopic minority”?

48
Answer.

c. Who presided over the first session of the Indian National Congress?
Answer.

d. Name the first Muslim President of the Indian National Congress.

Answer.

3.6. REFERENCES
Irfan Habib, A People’s History of India: The National Movement: Origins
and Early Phase, to 1918, vol. 30, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2017.
Ishita Banerjee Dube, A History of Modern India, Delhi: Cambridge
University Press, 2014.

3.7. FURTHER READINGS

Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885-1947, New Delhi: Macmillan, 1983.
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern
India, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2004.

3.8. MODEL QUESTIONS

1. To what extent was the emergence of the Congress in 1885 the
culmination of a process of political awakening that had its beginning in the
1870’s?
3. Discuss the role of early Indian Political Associations in the formation of
Indian National Congress.
3. ‘In its origin, Congress was an officially sponsored body, intended to act
as a safety valve for the growing discontent in India’. Comment.
4. Critically examine various theories put forward to explain the formation of
the Indian National Congress in 1885. Do you think the nature of its birth
affected its role in India’s struggle for independence? Comment.

49
LESSON 4
NATIONAL AWAKENING AND SOCIO-RELIGIOUS SOCIAL REFORM (HINDU)

Structure
4.0. Objectives
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Causes of National Awakening
4.3. Socio-Religious Social Reform Movements: Hindu
4.4. Brahmo Samaj
4.5. Prarthana Samaj
4.6. Arya Samaj
4.7. Ramakrishna Mission
4.8. Summary
4.9 References
4.10 Further Readings
4.11. Model Questions

4.0 OBJECTIVES

Students, after reading this lesson you will be able to:

 Know the causes of national awakening.
 Know the contributions made by the various Hindu Socio-Religious
Reform Movements in arousing national consciousness.
 Learn about the contributions of Raja Rammohan Roy, Keshab Chandra
Sen, Atmaram Pandurang, M.G. Ranade, Swami Dayanand
Saraswati, Swami Vivekanand in reforming the society.

4.1. INTRODUCTION
Students, the rise of national consciousness in India took place towards
the latter half of the 19th century only. Before that, there were struggles and
battles against British colonialism but they were all confined to smaller areas
and in any case, did not encompass the whole of India. In fact, some
scholars at the time did not consider India to be a country. Though political
union had occurred in the past under great kings like Ashoka, Akbar and
under the Marathas to an extent, but it was not permanent. However,
cultural unity was always seen and foreign powers always referred to the
subcontinent as India or Hind as being one entity, despite being ruled by
many rulers. This lesson willfamiliarize you with the various causes of national
consciousness and the role played by the prominent Hindu socio-religious
reform movements like Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, Prarthana Samaj and
50
Ramakrishna Mission in unifying and modernizing India.

4.2. CAUSES OF NATIONAL AWAKENING

Students, the second half of the 19th century witnessed the full
flowering of national political consciousness and the growth of an organised
national movement in India. The commencement of the national movement
was not an overnight thing. It was a process that took several years to bear
fruits. There were several reasons that contributed to the making of the
national movement in India. Let us discuss them in detail.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, nationalist sentiments grew
easily among the people because Indiba became politically unified and
welded into a nation under the British hegemony. The British gradually
introduced a uniform and modern system of government throughout the
country and thus unified it administratively. The destruction of the rural and
local self-sufficient economy and the introduction of modern trade and on an
all-India scale had increasingly made India's economic life a single whole
and inter-linked the economic fate of people living in different parts of the
country. For example, if famine or scarcity occurred in one part of India,
prices and availability of foodstuffs were affected in all other parts of the
country too. This was not usually the case before the 19th century. Similarly,
the products of a factory in Bombay were sold far north in Lahore or
Peshawar. The lives of the workers and capitalists in Madras, Bombay, or
Calcutta were closely linked with the lives of the countless peasants in
rural India. This factor led to the feeling of ‘oneness’ and nationhood among
Indians. The establishment of a uniform currency system, common
administration, common laws and judicial structure, also contributed to
India’s unification which ultimately helped the rise of national
consciousness.
Furthermore, the introduction of the railways, telegraphs, and unified
postal system had brought the different parts of the country together and
promoted mutual contact among the people, especially among the leaders. It
promoted the organisation and functioning of a number of political
organisations like Indian National Congress, All India Kisan Sabha, etc.
Without the modern means of transport, no national conferences could have
been held. Though all these facilities were developed in the interest of
the British industries and for political, administrative and military reasons but it
did contribute in forging the people of India into one nation. All this accelerated
the rise of a national movement in India.
Introduction of western education was another important factor which
paved the way for the growth of nationalism. The old system of education
was only perpetuating superstition and orthodoxy. English education was
51
treated as the treasure of scientific and democratic thought of the west.
Three main agencies were responsible for the spread of modern education
in India. They were the foreign Christian missionaries, the British
government and the progressive Indians. With the intention of spreading
Christianity among the Indians, the Christian missionaries did extensive
work in the spread of modern education. They were among the pioneers of
modern education in India. In 1835, the British government instituted a
western educational system in India with the aim of creating a class of
educated Indians who could serve their colonial masters in the
administration of the ‘natives’, serve British interests and be loyal to them.
This class would be “Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in
opinions, in morals and in intellect”. This idea sort of backfired because the
English language united Indians from various regions and religions and
created a class of Indians who became exposed to the liberal and radical
thoughts of European writers who expounded the ideas of nationalism,
secularism, liberty, equality, democracy, and rationality. Rousseau, Paine,
John Stuart Mill, and other Western thinkers became their political guides,
while Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Irish nationalist leaders became their political
heroes. Such consciousness found expression in the formation of various
organisations where people could meet and discuss various problems of
their motherland on national level. These English educated Indians became
instrumental in arousing political consciousness among the masses and
organising socio-political-economical and religious reforms in India.
Consequently, it came about that modern ideas spread faster and
deeper in many countries where they were propagated through indigenous
languages than in India where emphasis on English confined them to a
narrow urban section. This fact was fully recognised by the Indian
political leaders from DadabhaiNaoroji, Sayyid Ahmed Khan, and Justice
Ranade to Tilak and Gandhiji, who agitated for a bigger role for the Indian
languages in the educational system. Therefore, the 19th century also saw
the revival of vernacular languages. The few educated Indians developed
the tools to transmit western learning in the vernacular languages of India.
This helped the propagation of the ideas of liberty and rational thought to
the masses. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Anand Math (which contained the
song VandeMataram) and in 1860 Dinabandhu Mitra’s play Nil Darpan
(which portrayed how the indigo planters oppressed the poor peasants by
forcefully making them cultivate indigo), extorted tremendous influence upon
the people and created anti-British feelings among them. Bharatendu Harish
Chandra’s play Bharata Durdasha reflected the miserable condition of Indian
masses under the British rule. Besides several eminent poets and writers in
different languages, e.g. Rabindranath Tagore in Bengali, Vishnu Shastri

52
Chiplunkar in Marathi, LaxminathBazbama in Assamese, Mohammad
Hussain Azad and Altaf Hussain Ali in Urdu etc. contributed a lot to rouse
nationalism among the local people through their writings.
The 19th century also saw the rise of the Indian press. Raja Ram
Mohan Roy was the founder of nationalist press and journalism in India. His
SambadKaumudi in Bengali published in 1821 and Mirat-ul-Akbar in Persian
published in 1822, were the first publications with a distinct nationalist and
democratic progressive orientation. The Indian press was freed of
restrictions by Charles Metcalfe in 1835. Gradually, many other nationalist
newspapers were published both in the English and in the regional
languages. In their columns, the official policies were constantly criticised;
the Indian point of view was put forward; the people were asked to unite and
work for national welfare; and ideas of self-government, democracy,
Swadeshi, etc., were popularised among the people. The press also enabled
nationalist workers living in different parts of the country to exchange views
with one another. Some of the prominent nationalist newspapers of the
period, which played an important role in exposing the failure of the British
government in providing welfare measures to the people were the Hindu
Patriot, Amrita Bazar Patrika, Indian Mirror, Bengalee, Som Prakash and
Sanjivani in Bengal; RastGoftar, Native Opinion, Indu Prakash, Mahratta,
and Kesari in Bombay; the Hindu, Swadesamitran, Andhra Prakasika, and
Kerala Patrikain Madras; Advocate, Hindustani, andAzad in U. P.; and
Tribune, Akhbar-i-Am, andKoh-i-Noor in the Punjab. The press also brought
the news of the international world which made the people conscious of their
own position in India. Among the news agencies, The Free Press News
Service played the most important role in distributing news from the
nationalist standpoint. The struggle for the freedom of the press had been an
integral part of the national movement in India. Raja Rammohan Roy was
the first fighter who filed a petition in the Supreme Court of Calcutta along
with some enlightened nationalist Indians such as Dwarkanath Tagore,
Chandra Kumar Tagore, Prasanna Kumar Tagore etc.
Several movements and events in foreign countries also helped in
awakening national consciousness. The Declaration of Independence by
U.S.A. in 1776, the French Revolution of 1789, the Unification of Italy and
Germany in 1870, defeat of Russia by Japan in 1904 etc. inspired the
Indians. They became confident that it would be possible to fight against the
mighty British authority for their right of self-determination. World events
thus, motivated Indians and promoted the rise of nationalism.
These educated Indians were the first to feel the humiliation of
foreign subjection. By becoming modern in their thinking, they also acquired
the ability to study the evil effects of the foreign rule. Gradually, the Indians
53
realised that the British had conquered India to promote their own interests,
often subordinating Indian welfare to British gains. The economic policies
followed by the British led to the rapid transformation of Indian’s economy
into a colonial economy whose nature and structure were determined by the
needs of the British economy. Their interests were being sacrificed to those
of Lancashire manufacturers. Indian goods made with primitive techniques
failed to compete with the goods produced on a mass scale by powerful
steam- operated machines. The development of railways enabled the
British manufactures to reach and uproot the traditional industries in the
remotest villages of the country. The gradual destruction of rural crafts broke
up the union between agricultural and domestic industry in the countryside
and thus contributed to the destruction of the self-sufficient village economy.
Similarly, excessive land revenue demands by the British government,
commercialisation of agriculture, increasing indebtedness, growth of
landlordism, recurrent famines, etc. broke the backbone of the poor
peasants. Many intelligent Indians saw that many of these evils could have
been avoided and over-come if Indian and not foreign interests had guided
the policies of the Indian government. They were inspired by the dream of a
modern, strong, prosperous, and united India. In course of time, the best
among them became the leaders and organisers of the national movement.
The various social and religious reform movements which took place
in the 19th century in India were nothing but an expression of the rising
national consciousness of the people. The newly educated class who
imbibed the liberal western culture, recognized the need of reforming social
institutions and religious outlooks as these were regarded as obstacles to
national advance. A number of organisations likeBrahmo Samaj, Arya
Samaj, RamakrishnaMission, Prarthana Samaj, etc. helped in bringing
movements of reformation and renaissance in India.These movements
sought to remove the then prevalent superstitions and societal evils, and
spread the word of unity, rational and scientific thought, women
empowerment, nationalism, democratic ideas, and gave the message of
love for their motherland. It tried to reform the minds of the Indians and
awoke them from centuries of thraldom. Notable reformers were Raja
Rammohan Roy, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Vivekananda, Sayyid
Ahmad Khan, Annie Basant, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Jyotiba Phule and
so on. The message of Swami Dayanand Saraswati to people, “India for the
Indians”, and Swami Vivekanand message, “Arise, awake and stop not till
the goal is reached”, etc. appealed to the Indians. It acted as a potent force
in the course of Indian nationalism.
When nationalism was flaring up in the minds of Indian people, the
memory of the Great Revolt of 1857 flashed back before them. The heroic

54
action of Nana Saheb, Tantya Tope, Rani Laxmi Bai and other leaders of the
Revolt became fresh in their mind. It inspired the people to give a toe fight to
the British rule.
Many Indians had fallen so low as to have lost confidence in their
own capacity for self-government. Moreover, many British officials and
writers of the time constantly advanced the thesis that Indians had never
been able to rule themselves in the past, that Hindus and Muslims had
always fought one another, that Indians were destined to be ruled by
foreigners, that their religion and social life were degraded and uncivilised
making them unfit for democracy or even self-government. In the late
nineteenth century, British historians also adopted pseudo-scientific theory
of ‘Survival of the Fittest’ by Darwin, to justify their rule in India. The very fact
that the Europeans were able to beat the non- Europeans in war showed
that in terms of evolution and progress they were more fit to rule than were
the non-Europeans. Also, following the Rudyard Kipling’s legacy, the
colonial state was portrayed as a benign and altruistic state carrying the
onerous burden of governing India since the Indians were deemed incapable
of doing so. However, the nineteenth century Indian Renaissance created
several avenues in the field of oriental studies. Orientalist scholars like Max
Muller, Sir William Jones, Alexander Cunningham, etc. translated several
ancient Sanskrit texts of this land and established before the people the
glorious cultural heritage of India. Inspired by them, the Indian scholars like
R.D. Banerjee, R.G. Bhandarkar, R.C. Majumdar, R.K. Mukerjee, Bal
Gangadhar Tilak, etc. also rediscovered India’s past glory from the history of
this land. This infused people with pride and flared up the fire of nationalism
or helped in regenerating a sense of self confidence and patriotism among
the people.
Moreover, the Indian intelligentsia suffered from growing
unemployment. The few Indians who were educated were not able to find
employment and even those who did find jobs discovered that most of the
better paid jobs were reserved for the English middle and upper classes,
who looked upon India as a special pasture for their sons. Thus, educated
Indians found that the economic and cultural development of the country and
its freedom from foreign control alone could provide them with better
employment opportunities.
DadabhaiNaoroji (1825-1917) was one of the leading nationalist
leaders, who aroused the feeling of economic nationalism and propagated it.
It was in the year 1867 that for the first time DadabhaiNaoroji in his speech
addressed before the East India Association, put forward his ‘drain theory’.
He highlighted the exploitative nature of the British rule in India and said that
Britain was ‘draining’ India of all its wealth and ‘bleeding India white’. He
55
calculated that out of the revenues raised in India nearly one-fourth goes out
of the country and is added to the resources of England. In Naoroji's
calculation this huge drainage amounted to about £12 million per year. He
tried to establish that British rule has led to economic ruination of India. His
book Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901) remains a significant
milestone in the formulation of the nationalist political economy. “The face of
beneficence”, he said, “was a mask behind which the exploitation of the
country was carried on by the British”. His ‘drain theory’ was further
elaborated by other nationalist leaders like M.G. Ranade and R.C. Dutt.
These three leaders along with G.V. Joshi, G. SubramaniyaIyer, G.K.
Gokhale, Tilak, Surendranath Banerjee, and hundreds of other political
workers and journalists also analysed every aspect of the economy and
subjected the entire range of economic issues and colonial economic
policies to minute scrutiny. They were able to see that colonialism no longer
functioned through the crude tools of plunder, ‘tribute’ and mercantilism
but operated through the more disguised and complex mechanism of
free trade and foreign capital investment. This critique by the economic
nationalists was perhaps the most important contribution to the development
of the national movement in India.This critique formed the core of nationalist
agitation in the era of mass movements after 1920. Tilak, Gandhiji,
Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and Subhash Chandra Bose, relied heavily
upon it.
The rising Indian capitalist class was slow in developing a national
political consciousness. But it too gradually saw that it was suffering at the
hands of imperialism. Its growth was severely checked by the government
trade, tariff, taxation, and transport policies. As a new and weak class it
needed active government help to counterbalance many of its weaknesses.
But no such help was given. The Indian capitalists were particularly opposed
to the strong competition from foreign capitalists. In the 1940's many of the
Indian industrialists demanded that “All British investments in India be
repatriated”. And, in 1945, M.A. Master, President of the Indian Merchants'
Chamber warned: “India would prefer to go without industrial development
rather than allow the creation of new East India Companies in this country,
which would not only militate against her economic independence but would
also effectively prevent her from acquiring her political freedom”. The Indian
capitalists too, therefore, realised that there existed a contradiction between
imperialism and their own independent growth, and that only a national
government would create conditions for the rapid development of Indian
trade and industries.
By the 1870's it was evident that Indian nationalism had gathered
enough strength and momentum to appear as a major force on the Indian

56
political scene. However, it required the reactionary regime of Lord Lytton to
give it visible form and the controversy around the Ilbert Bill to make it take
up an organised form. During Lytton's viceroyalty from 1876-80 most of the
import duties on British textile imports were removed to benefit the textile
manufacturers of Britain. This action was interpreted by Indians as proof of
the British desire to ruin the small but growing textile industry of India. It
created a wave of anger in the country and led to widespread nationalist
agitation. The second war against Afghanistan aroused vehement agitation
against the heavy cost of this imperialist war which the Indian treasury was
made to bear. The Arms Act of 1878, which prohibited the Indians from
keeping arms without license, appeared to them as an effort to emasculate
the entire nation. The Vernacular Press Act of 1878, which authorised the
government to confiscate newspapers that printed ‘seditious material’, was
condemned by the politically conscious Indians as an attempt to suppress
the growing nationalist criticism of the alien government. The holding of the
Imperial Durbar at Delhi in 1877 at a time when the country was suffering
from a terrible famine, in which almost 10 million people died, led people to
question their benevolent nature. In 1878, the government announced new
regulations reducing the maximum age limit for sitting in the Indian Civil
Service Examination from 21 years to 19 years. Already Indian students had
found it difficult to compete with the English boys since the examination was
conducted in England and in English. The new regulations further reduced
their chances of entering the Civil Services. The Indians now realised that
the British had no intention of relaxing their near-total monopoly of the
higher grades of services in the administration. Thus, Lytton's viceroyalty
helped to intensify discontent against foreign rule.
If Lytton fed the smouldering discontent against British rule, the
spark was provided by the Ilbert Bill controversy. In 1883,Ilbert Bill was
introduced which gave the Indian judges the power to hear cases against
European, by the then Viceroy Lord Ripon, who succeeded Lytton, and Sir
Courtenay Ilbert, the legal advisor to the Council of India. It was a very
meagre effort to remove a glaring instance of racial discrimination. But it
created hue and cry among the Europeans both in Britain and in India. They
poured abuses on Indians and their culture and character. They declared
that even the most highly educated among the Indians were unfit to try a
European. Some of them even organised a conspiracy to kidnap the Viceroy
and deport him to England. In the end, the Government of India bowed
before the Europeans and amended the bill to suit their interests. The
Indians were horrified at the racial bitterness displayed by the critics of the
bill. They also became more fully conscious of the degradation to which
foreign rule had reduced them. They organised an all-India campaign in

57
favour of the bill. And, most of all, they learnt the useful lesson that to get
their demands accepted by the government they too must organise
themselves on a national scale and agitate continuously and unitedly.
The birth of Indian National Congress in 1885 gave a final spark to
the growth of national consciousness among the Indians. It was the first
organised expression of Indian nationalism on an all-India scale. Under
its leadership Indians waged a prolonged and courageous struggle for
independence from foreign rule, which India finally won on 15 August 1947.
Thus, all these factors over the years encouraged nationalism. A
new spirit was instilled into the body, mind and soul of the Indians. They now
rose up from slumber and jumped into the freedom struggle. The birth of
Indian National Congress in 1885 galvanized the process. It played a vital
role in achieving India’s independence.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. Mention two causes for the rise of nationalism in India in the second half
of the 19th century.
Answer.

b. What was Arm’s Act of 1878?

Answer.

c. What was the Ilbert Bill controversy?

Answer.

4.3. SOCIO-RELIGIOUS SOCIAL REFORM MOVEMENTS: HINDU

Students, as discussed above socio-religious reform movements, were one
of the factors which played a dominant role in arousing national consciousness
in the 19th century. Let us discuss their origin, programmes and the prominent
role played by them in detail. The socio-religious reform movements were
organized among all the communities of the Indian people like amongst the
Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, etc. But in this chapter we will discuss only the Hindu
socio-religious reform movements, the other ones will be discussed in the next
chapter.

58
The Indian society in the first half of the 19th century was caste ridden,
decadent and rigid. It followed certain practices which were not in keeping with
humanitarian feelings or values but were still being followed in the name of
religion. When the British came to India they introduced the English language as
well as certain modern ideas of liberty, social and economic equality, fraternity,
nationalism, democracy, secularism, justice, etc. which had a tremendous
impact on Indian society. This contradiction between the traditional religious
outlook, practices and organization, on the one hand, and the infiltration of new
democratic and liberal ideas on the other hand, gave rise to various socio-
religious reform movements in the country. Most of the movements of social
reform were of a religious character. This was due to the fact that in India,
religion dominated and determined the life of the individual in India or in other
words, religion and social structure were organically interwoven. Caste
hierarchy, sex inequality, untouchability, and social taboos, flourished because
of the sanction of the religion. Even one’s economic activities, social life,
behaviour, marriage, birth and death, physical movements, all were strictly
and minutely controlled by religion. Therefore, to bring about any social
change, it was essential to reform religion first. These religious reform
movements represented attempts to revise the old religion to meet the new
social, political, economic and cultural needs of the contemporary Indian
nation. In other words, their programmes were not restricted to the task of
merely reforming religion but were extended to that of reconstruction of
social institutions and social relations. It should be noted that the aim of
these reformers was never to replace the local culture of India with the
western culture. Rather they simply assimilated some western values which
they saw as desirable for the development of the society. They emphasised
more on the interpretation of scriptures and simplification of rituals rather
than outrightly imitating westernisation. The early religious reform
movements were the expression of the first national awakening of the Indian
people. They attacked bigotry, superstition, caste system, Purdah system,
Sati, child marriage, social inequalities, illiteracy and the hold of the priestly
class, which were a major hindrance in uniting people for the common
cause.
Kenneth W. Jones put forth two distinct types of movement within the
period of British rule, i.e., the 'transitional' and the 'acculturative'. Transitional
movements had their origins in the pre-colonial world and arose from
indigenous forms of socio-religious dissent, with little or no influence from the
colonial milieu, either because it was not yet established or because it had failed
to affect the individuals involved in a particular movement. The clearest
determinant of a transitional movement was an absence of anglicized individuals
among its leaders and a lack of concern with adjusting its concepts and

59
programmes to the colonial world. Whereas acculturative movements originated
within the colonial milieu and were led by individuals who were products of
cultural interaction or by the English educated South Asians. Let us discuss
some of them in detail.

4.4. BRAHMO SAMAJ

The British conquest and the consequent dissemination of colonial culture
and ideology had led to an inevitable introspection about the strengths and
weaknesses of indigenous culture and institutions. The response, indeed,
was varied but the need to reform social and religious life was a commonly
shared conviction. The socio-cultural regeneration in nineteenth century
India was occasioned by the colonial presence, but not created by it. The
spirit of reform embraced almost the whole of India beginning with the efforts
of Raja Rammohan Roy (1772-1833) in Bengal, often called the father of
Indian renaissance and the inaugurator of modern India.
Raja Rammohan Roy was born to an orthodox Brahmin family (an
upper-caste gentry) of Bengal, whose power and position had been
enhanced by the Permanent Settlement and other opportunities opened up
by colonial rule. He was a learned scholar who knew more than a dozen
languages. Roy learned Bengali as his mother tongue and his early
education also included the study of Persian and Arabic at Patna where he
read the Quran, the works of Sufi mystic poets and the Arabic translation of
the works of Plato and Aristotle in preparation for future employment. In
Banaras, he studied Sanskrit and read Vedas and Upanishads as it befitted
his priestly rank. Right from his childhood he had a very rationalistic
approach and often questioned the orthodox beliefs, and consequently came
into conflict with his parents. In his religious-philosophical and social outlook,
he was deeply influenced by the monotheism and anti-idolatry of Islam,
Deism of Sufism, the ethical teachings of Christianity and the liberal and
rationalist doctrines of the West. He tried to interpret and assimilate into
himself the highest elements of Islam, Christianity and modern rationalism or
humanism, and transformed them into a single creed which he found in the
ancient Upanishadic philosophy of his own community. The year after his
father’s death in 1803, Roy published his religious views in a Persian tract,
Tohfat al-Muwahhiddin (A Gift to Mono- theists), making public his criticism
of idolatry and polytheism. The intellectual influences motivated him to
contest the missionary claim of superiority of Christianity; his answer was to
reform Hinduism in the light of reason, by going back to its purest form as
enshrined in the Vedanta texts. He translated the Vedas and the five
Upanishads in Bengali to prove his conviction that the ancient Hindu texts
60
themselves propagated monotheism.
Roy possessed great love and respect for the traditional philosophic
systems of the East; but, at the same time, he believed that western culture
alone would help to regenerate the Indian society. In particular, Roy wanted
his countrymen to accept the rational and scientific approach and the
principle of human dignity and social equality of all men and women. He was
also in favour of the introduction of modern capitalism and industry in the
country. Roy represented a synthesis of the thought of East and West.
Roy first attempted to establish an organizational base for his ideas in
the year 1815 when he founded the Atmiya Sabha (Friendly Association) in
Calcutta, to campaign against idolatry, caste rigidities, meaningless rituals
and other social ills. It eventually took the shape of Brahmo Sabha in 1828.
It emerged as a major acculturative religious movement of the middle-class
educated Bengalis, based on the essential principle of monotheism. Its
chief aim was the worship of the eternal God. Its new society was to be
based on the twin pillars of reason and the Vedas and Upanishads. Most of
all it based itself on human reason because it was to be the ultimate criterion
for deciding what was worthwhile and what was useless in the past or
present religious principles and practices. For that reason, the Brahmo
Sabha denied the need for a priestly class for interpreting religious writings.
Every individual had the right and the capacity to decide with the help of
his own intellect what was right and what was wrong in a religious book or
principle. He substituted priests with scriptures as the sources of proper
knowledge. This doctrine stimulated the translations of the Upanishads
and of the Vedanta-Sutras into the vernacular languages as well as into
English. It also meant an increased use of printing to make these texts and
his own writings available to all who might wish to read them. This ended the
Brahmin monopoly to scriptural knowledge. Now women, peasants,
untouchables, and non-Hindus could read and study the sacred scriptures. It
focused on prayers, meditation and reading of the scriptures. It believed in
the unity of all religions and expounded the conception of ‘one God of all
religions and humanity’. He put a ban on criticism of other religious beliefs
and practices. He launched an offensive drive against the caste system
branding it as undemocratic, inhuman, and anti-national. It crusaded against
the inhuman custom of Sati and child marriage. He publicly declared that he
would emigrate from the British Empire if Parliament failed to pass the Sati
Abolition Reform Bill. His efforts were rewarded in the year 1829, when Lord
William Bentinck, the then Governor-General of India, banned Sati by
passing his famous Bengal Regulation XVII in 1829 which declared Sati
as an illegal and punishable offence by courts in India. As a campaigner for
women’s rights, Roy condemned the general subjugation of women and
61
demanded equal rights of man and woman. He attacked polygamy and the
degraded state of widows and demanded the right of inheritance and
property for women. It was the first intellectual reform movement in modern
India. It led to the emergence of rationalism and enlightenment in India which
indirectly contributed to the nationalist movement. It was the forerunner of all
social, religious and political movements of modern India.
Roy was one of the earliest propagators of modern education, which he
looked upon as a major instrument for the spread of modern ideas in the
country. In 1817, David Hare, who had come to India in 1800 as a
watchmaker, spent his entire life in the promotion of modern education in the
country. With the assistance of Roy, David Hare founded the famous Hindu
College in Calcutta, which later came to be known as the Presidency
College. Roy gave most enthusiastic assistance to Hare in his educational
projects. He maintained at his own cost an English school in Calcutta from
1817 in which, among other subjects, mechanics and the philosophy of
Voltaire were taught. In 1825, Roy established a Vedanta College in which
courses both in Indian learning and in western social and physical sciences
were offered. Roy represented the first glimmerings of the rise of national
consciousness in India.
Roy was a pioneer of Indian journalism. He brought out journals in
Bengali, Persian, Hindi, and English to spread scientific literary, and political
knowledge among the people, to educate public opinion on topics of current
interest, and to represent popular demands and grievances before the
government. Roy was also the initiator of public agitation on political
questions in the country. Roy condemned the oppressive practices of the
Bengal Zamindars, which had reduced the peasants to a miserable
condition. Roy demanded that the maximum rents paid by the actual
cultivators of land should be permanently fixed so that they too would enjoy
the benefits of the Permanent Settlement of 1793. Roy also protested
against the attempts to impose taxes on tax-free lands. Roy demanded the
abolition of the Company’s trading rights and the removal of heavy export
duties on Indian goods. Roy raised the demands for the Indianization of the
higher services, separation of the executive and the judiciary, trial by jury,
and judicial equality between Indians and Europeans. He took a keen
interest in international events and everywhere he supported the cause of
liberty, democracy, and nationalism and opposed injustice, oppression,
and tyranny in every form. Being an internationalist in his vision, he
supported the revolutions of Naples and Spanish America. He condemned
the oppression of Ireland by absentee English landlords. In 1830, he was
conferred the title of ‘Raja’ and sent to England as an emissary by Mughal
Emperor Akbar II to the court of William IV to plead for the increment in his

62
annual pension.
After Roy's death in 1833, the leadership of the Brahmo movement was
taken over by Debendranath Tagore (1817-1905) who provided the movement
with a better organisational structure and ideological consistency. In 1839,
Debendranath Tagore, father of Rabindranath Tagore, founded the
Tattvabodhini Sabha (Truth-Teaching Association) to propagate Raja
Rammohan Roy's ideas. It held weekly religious discussions and monthly
worship. He and his new organization accepted Vedanta, as had Roy, but in
contrast emphasized the superiority of Hinduism. In 1843, Tagore began
publication of the TattvabodhiniPatrika, a newspaper that promoted a
systematic study of India's past in the Bengali language. Tagore on one front
focused on reforming Hinduism from within and on another front opposed
the Christian missionaries for their aggressive evangelist activities and
criticism of Hinduism. As a result, Tagore gained a major voice in the
propagation of theistic Hinduism. In spite of his success with the
Tattvabodhini Sabha, he decided to revive the Brahmo Sabha. In 1842,
Debendranath Tagore joined the Brahmo Sabha but it was a year later that
he began to restore the Sabha by bringing to it a degree of structure and
ideological coherence. He wrote the Brahma Covenant, a creedal statement
that listed the basic obligations of membership and changed the name to
the Brahmo Samaj and put a new life into it. The Samaj actively supported
the movement for widow remarriage, abolition of polygamy, women's
education, improvement of the Ryot's condition, etc.
Under his leadership, the Brahmo Samaj began to expand out of
Calcutta into the cities of eastern Bengal. In 1846, a branch of the Samaj was
opened in Dacca and during the next two decades the Brahmos continued to
spread throughout the East. During the 1850s and 1860s young Bengalis were
attracted to the Brahmo Samaj. They brought with them a restlessness, a sharp
rejection of their parents’ values, and a militancy not found among the older
Brahmos. By 1857, one man, Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-84), stood out among
these young disciples and by 1859 became an active worker. He was an
impressive speaker who soon grew into an outstanding spokesman among the
younger members of the Samaj and a close associate of Debendranath Tagore.
Sen's specific focus was to reach larger numbers of non-westernised Bengalis
in the eastern Gangetic plains and to take the movement outside Bengal to
other provinces of India. Soon, branches of the Samaj were opened in the
United Provinces, Punjab, Bombay, Madras and other places outside Bengal. If
missionary activities had been one major contribution of Sen to the Brahmo
movement, the other contribution was a renewed attention to social reforms. He
brought in some amount of radicalism into the movement, by attacking caste
system, by focusing on the question of women's rights, by promoting widow

63
remarriage and inter-caste marriages, and by raising the issue of caste status of
the Brahmo preachers, a position hitherto reserved for the Brahmans alone. But
this radicalism also brought the first rift within the Brahmo movement. Basically,
as Meredith Borthwick has shown, it was a schism between Sen’s followers,
for whom social progress and reform were more important than anything
else, and the followers of Debendranath, who preferred to maintain their
identification with Hindu society. In 1866, it split into two parts, namely
Brahmo Samaj of India led by Keshab Chandra Sen and Adi (original)
Brahmo Samaj led by Debendranath Tagore. This rift was, as it became
clear soon, more about an identity crisis than about any fundamental
difference of ideology: while some of the Brahmos wanted to define
themselves as separate from the Hindus, others began to seek a position
within the great tradition of Hinduism.
The crisis deepened and the chasm expanded when the Brahmo
Marriage Act was passed in 1872, which prohibited child-marriage (fixed the
minimum marriageable age of girls at 14 and of boys at 18), bigamy,
polygamy and allowed separation and divorce. It also legalised Brahmo
marriages, which allowed inter-caste and widow marriage, but only if the
contracting parties declared themselves to be non-Hindus. In 1878, Sen
himself violated this Act by marrying her minor daughter, who was less than
14 years, with the minor Maharaja of Cooch Behar. He was thus violating his
own reformist principles, and therefore, many of his followers parted
company and formed the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj in 1878. In 1881, Sen
formed his NabaBidhan (New Dispensation) and started moving towards a
new universalist religion based on the union of East and West. But by this
time successive ideological rifts and organisational divisions had weakened
the Brahmo movement, confining it to a small elite group. After the death of
Keshab Chandra Sen in 1884, no leader of his grand stature arose.

Thus, the Brahmo Samaj was not merely a religious movement but also
included in its programme items of social and political reform. It inaugurated a
new era for the Indian people by proclaiming the principles of individual
freedom, national unity, solidarity and collaboration and the democratization of
all social institutions and social relations. Though Brahmo Samaj was weakened
by internal dissension in the second half of the 19th century. Yet it had a
decisive influence on the intellectual, social, cultural, and political life of
Bengal and the rest of India in the 19th and the 20th centuries. It was the
precursor of the subsequent social reform movement started by Ranade and
others and the political reform movement initiated by the early Indian National
Congress. The religious reform movement thus prepared for purely secular
social and political reform movements in the country. That is the historical
significance of Raja Ram Mohan Roy and the Brahmo Samaj.
64
4.5. PRARTHNA SAMAJ
Ideas similar to that propagated by the Brahmo Samaj were echoed in
other presidencies. In Maharashtra, in particular, Atmaram Pandurang (1823-
98), enthused by the visit of the Brahmo leader Keshab Chandra Sen, took the
initiative in establishing the Prarthana Samaj (Prayer Society) in Bombay in
1867. It was a pioneer socio-religious reform movement in western India.
Though it was inspired by the Brahmo Samaj but it was milder and less radical in
its principles. Following Keshab Sen’s subsequent visit in 1868, Mahadev
Gobind Ranade (1842-1901), R.G. Bhandarkar (1837-1925) and N.G.
Chandavarkar, also joined the Prarthana Samaj and infused it with new vigour.
Although its founder president was Atmaram Pandurang, the real spirit behind it
was Ranade. The peculiar feature of the movement in [Bombay] Presidency,
Ranade pointed out, was that “Its goal was not to break with the past and cease
all connection with our society”. It was this gradualist approach, which made
Prarthana Samaj relatively more acceptable to the larger society.

Founded in 1867, the Prarthana Samaj acculturative movement had

its origins in a secret organization called the ParamhansaMandali founded
by Dadoba Pandurang in the early 1849 with the object of promoting social
and religious universalism on the basis of rationalism. After 1860, due to
several factors, the Sabha became defunct but did not die out completely. Its
members helped Atmaram Pandurang in founding the open reformatory
association called Prarthana Samaj. Thus, both personnel and ideology
were carried forth from the ruins of that organization. Shortly after its
founding, a managing committee was appointed and weekly meetings were
scheduled for each Sunday. These gatherings consisted of Bhakti hymns,
lectures, and readings from various scriptures. Prarthana Samaj accepted
the universal values of religion which are contained in the Upanishads,
the Bhagvad Gita, in Buddhism, in the teachings of medieval saints like
Tukaram, in the Bible and in the other religious literature of the world.
Though, its principles were derived from all the religions but they mainly drew
on devotional literature of Maharashtra Bhakti School. Like the Brahmo
movement, the Prarthana Samaj also preached monotheism and spiritual
worship of one true God who is the creator of this universe, denounced
idolatry, priestly domination, non-belief in incarnations and revelations, non-
acceptance of any book as revealed word of God. But on the whole, the
Samaj was more concerned with social reforms than with the religion. It did
not see God in isolation from humanity but in and through it. Its mission and
message, as that of the Brahmo Samaj, in the words of Justice Ranade,
was to “humanise, equalise and spiritualise”.
They mainly sought changes in four areas: they wished to end the
65
ban on widow remarriage, to abandon all caste restrictions, to abolish
Purdah and child marriage, and to encourage the education of women.
Members of the Samaj had communal meals prepared by a cook from a low
caste. They also ate bread that was baked by a Christian and drank water
brought by a Muslim. Dhondo Keshav Karve and Vishnu Shastri were
champions of social reform with Ranade. Along with Karve, Ranade
founded the Widow Remarriage Association as well as the Widows’ Home
Association, which aimed at making widows self-supporting by giving them
training as teachers, midwives or nurses. In no other part of India did the
social reform movement work so successfully and create such profound
influence as in Maharashtra under the auspices of the Prarthana Samaj.
Bengalis continued to provide assistance to this new organization through
visits by distinguished Brahmos. In 1872-3, Pratap Chandra Majumdar spent
six months in Bombay where he helped to organize night-schools for
education among the working classes, and aided in starting the journal
Subodh Patrika; which was originally published in Marathi, but in 1877
English columns were added. In spite of the assistance and inspiration
supplied by Bengali Brahmos, the Prarthana Samaj leaders refused to
accept the label of ‘Brahmos’ or to formally link their own society with the
Bengali Samaj. In 1906, a Depressed Classes Mission of India under the
leadership of Vithal Ramji Shinde was formed for elevating the spiritual and
social condition of the depressed classes. This agenda of social reform was
complemented by the work of scholars like Bhandarkar and K.T. Telang,
who drew inspiration from the Orientalist scholars and undertook painstaking
examinations and translations of Sanskrit texts in order to rediscover Indian
civilization.
The Samaj relied on education and persuasion and not on confrontation
with Hindu orthodoxy or were always careful not to break ties with Hindu society
as was done by the Brahmos of Bengal. Therefore, the society’s meetings were
done in secret for fear of a backlash from orthodoxy. Also, the Prarthana Samaj
never directly attacked the orthodox sections of society or Brahminical power.
For instance, some of the Samaj members worked openly for the acceptance of
widow remarriage, but the Prarthana Samaj as an organization did not lead in
this campaign. Though its membership was open to all but all the leading
personalities in this new organisation were western educated Marathi Brahmins
only.
The Prarthana Samaj managed to open branch societies in Poona,
Surat, Ahmedabad and Karachi. The majority of new Prarthana Samaj
were located to the East and the South-East, at Kirkee, Kolhapur, and
Satara in the Desh, or in the towns of the Dravidian South. By the early
twentieth century, eighteen Prarthana Samaj existed in the Madras

66
Presidency. Its activities flourished in South India, mainly by the efforts of
Virasalingam, a Telugu reformer.

In 1875, Swami Dayanand Saraswati visited Gujarat and Maharashtra

and offered the possibilities of a more radical and self-assertive religious move-
ment. A group of Samaj members, under the leadership of S.P. Kelkar, feeling
attracted to the Swami’s Aryan ideology, broke away and founded the Brahmo
Samaj of Bombay as they wanted to have the Prarthana Samaj, which could
openly reject all the caste rules and restrictions. Although the dissident group
later came back to the fold of Prarthana Samaj, this marked the beginning of a
different kind of religious politics in western India, which was marked more by
cultural chauvinism than reformism.

Like that of the Brahmo Samaj, the success of the Prarthana Samaj in
restoring Hindu self-respect was an important factor in the growth of Indian
nationalism, and thus contributed to political independence.

4.6. ARYA SAMAJ

Swami Dayanand Saraswati (1824-1883), the founder of Arya
Samaj, a transitional movement, undertook the task of reforming Hindu
religion in north India. He was born to an orthodox Brahmin family in village
Tankara (Gujrat). Young Mul Shankar (later known as Dayananda) was
educated in his home by local tutors. He studied religious texts and
Sanskrit in preparation for his life as an orthodox Shaivite. He questioned
and then rejected his expected role. The young Mulji fled from his home and
wandered as an ascetic for fifteen years (1845-60) in search of truth. He was
initiated into the order of SaraswatiDandis, from there he took the name
Dayananda. His life’s direction changed in November 1860, when he met
and became the disciple of Swami Virajananda. From him he got the true
knowledge of the Vedas and emerged with a new set of goals, namely to
purify Hinduism and save it from its contemporary degenerate state. He
believed that selfish and ignorant priests had perverted Hindu religion with
the aid of the Puranas which he said were full of false teachings. He
considered Vedas infallible and further, an inexhaustible reservoir of all
knowledge and by making adequate endeavour, one can discover in the
Vedas all modern chemistry, engineering and even military and non-
military sciences. To give expression to his ideology he founded the Arya
Samaj (Noble Society) on 10 April 1875 in Bombay and two years later,
i.e., in 1877, its headquarters was established in Lahore. His views were
published in his famous work, Satyartha Prakash (The True Exposition) in
Hindi, in which he criticized the shortcomings of other religions very boldly
and tried his utmost to prove the supremacy of the Vedic religion.
67
To revive Hinduism, he gave the slogan “Back to the Vedas”. It is
important to note that his slogan was a call for a revival of Vedic learning
and not for a revival of Vedic times. Its slogan was inspired with the urge to
bring about national unity and to kindle national pride and
consciousness. Dayananda began to preach a ‘purified’ Hinduism, one that
rejected the popular Puranas, polytheism, idolatry, the role of Brahmin
priests, pilgrimages, belief in magic charms, animal sacrifices, taboos on sea
voyages, feeding the dead through the Shraddhas, nearly all rituals - in
short, almost all of contemporary Hinduism.
The Arya Samaj opposed the hereditary caste system. However, it did
stand for the Chaturvarna system in which a person was identified as a
Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra not by birth but by the
occupation and merit of an individual. Since the Vedas laid down such a
division and the Vedas could not err, therefore, Arya Samaj could not
proclaim the death of the caste system itself. The Arya Samaj, by postulating
the infallibility of the Vedas, did not and could not permit the individual
judgement to override the divine text. Thus, the Arya Samaj while freeing the
individual from the tyranny and tutelage of the Brahmin, demanded of him
implicit faith in the divine Vedas. The authority of the Vedas was
maintained instead of the freedom of the individual judgement.

The Arya Samaj struggled against child marriages, female foeticide,

female infanticide, Sati system, widow remarriage etc. A line was drawn
between the virgin and the non-virgin widows. By the efforts of Arya Samaj,
the marriages of virgin widows came to be accepted in the society. It also
preached equality of man and woman. The constitution of the Arya Samaj
drawn up in 1875 provided for voluntary contributions, a hundredth part of
the earnings of each member, to the Samaj’s fund. The money thus
collected was spent on social services like famine relief, construction of
orphanages and, more importantly, on establishing and running educational
institutions.

At the time of death of Dayanand Saraswati in 1883 there were Arya

Samaj branches all over Punjab and North Western Provinces. It was from
this time on that the movement became more and more popular and
also more aggressive. By 1893, the Arya Samaj was formally divided between
the moderates and the militant groups. The Arya Samaj mainly split on the two
issues of meat-eating (moderates) vs vegetarianism (militants) and Anglicized
(moderates) vs Sanskrit-based education (militants). The moderate ‘College’
faction led by Hans Raj and Lala Lajpat Rai concentrated on building up a chain
of ‘Dayanand Anglo-Vedic’ schools and colleges, which imparted English
education but on the principles of the ‘Vedas’. The Dayananda Anglo–Vedic
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School setup in Lahore in 1886 soon developed into a college in 1889 and
became a model for several such institutions. It also developed a somewhat
sporadic interest in Congress politics as well as a more sustained involvement in
Swadeshi enterprise. The militant group or ‘Gurukul’ faction founded by Pandit
Lekh Ram and Munshi Ram started the Haridwar Gurukul in 1902 (based on
principles of Brahmacharya and Vedic training). They emphasized
proselytization through paid preachers and Shuddhi. And then in the 1890s, the
Arya Samaj became intensely involved in the cow-protection movement, thus
moving decisively from reformism to revivalism.

In its zeal to protect the Hindu society from the onslaught of

Christianity and Islam, the militant party started the Shuddhi (purification)
movement or the reconversion of the millions of Hindus, who had converted
willingly or under duress to Islam, Christianity and Sikhism, but were ready
to come back to the fold of Hinduism. Orthodox Hinduism did not allow for
reconversion, but Arya Samaj gave a new significance to Shuddhi. It
became a prime instrument in realizing its goal of attaining the religious,
social and political unity of India. India, in Dayananda’s vision, was
essentially Hindu and it could be regenerated through a revival of Vedic
rituals, including Shuddhi. It is not surprising that this crusade against
other religions became a contributory factor in the growth of communalism
in India in the 20th century. While the Arya Samaj’s reformist work tended to
unite people, its religious work tended, though perhaps unconsciously, to
divide the growing national unity among Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, Sikhs, and
Christians. It was not seen clearly that in India national unity had to be
secular and above religion so that it would embrace people of all religions.
The cultural renaissance generated by the Arya Samaj had its great
impact in the political field as well. By raising the slogan ‘India for Indians’
and ‘Swaraj’, i.e., ‘one’s own government’, it filled the minds of people with
the sentiments of self-respect, patriotism, and launched agitation for
Swadeshi and national independence. The Indian National Congress owes
much to the Arya Samaj for its national programme to achieve freedom. In
Punjab, its leaders such as Swami Shradhanand and Lala Lajpat Rai
made a special contribution to the national movement. At one point, the Arya
Samaj was one of the main targets of political repression. It is hardly surprising,
therefore, that when Sir Valentine Chirol visited India on behalf of The Times to
investigate the cause of unrest after 1907, he looked upon the Arya Samaj as ‘a
serious menace to England and sovereignty’. The government dealt severely
with many Arya Samajists and dismissed them from the government jobs and
put many of them in prison.

The Arya Samaj did evoke national awakening among the Indian
69
people. The Arya Samaj had two aspects, i.e., one progressive and other
reactionary. It played a progressive role in the earlier stages when the national
awakening was just sprouting. When it attacked religious superstitions and the
sacerdotal dictatorship of the Brahmin, when it denounced polytheism, and
when further it adopted the programme of mass education of the elimination of
sub-castes, of the equality of man and woman, it played a progressive role. But
when it declared the Vedas infallible and a treasure house of all knowledge of
the cosmos, past, present, and future, when it stood for the division of society
into four castes though based on merit, it was playing an anti-progressive
role. No knowledge could ever be final in the infinite and eternally evolving social
and natural world. So, the Vedas could not be the embodiment of all knowledge.
As such, subsequent generations have to critically carry over all inherited past
knowledge and subject it to the test of reason and social usefulness. Here
comes the role of individual judgement. Once the Vedas were eulogized as
infallible, the individual as well as the generation he belonged to, were denied
the right to exercise their own independent judgement and pronounce upon the
ancient scriptures. This was intellectual enslavement of the individual and the
generation to the scriptures. It was a departure from the principles of liberalism.

4.7. RAMAKRISHNA MATH AND MISSION

This acculturative socio-religious movement was started by
Ramakrishna Paramhansa (1834-1886), who was born into an orthodox
poor Brahmin family in the Hugli district of Bengal. He received no formal
education but found a job as a priest at the newly established
Dakshineshwar Temple of Goddess Kali located in the outskirts of the
Calcutta city. He experienced spiritual or ecstatic trances (a state of semi-
consciousness) from a very early age. He was a saintly person who
sought religious salvation in the traditional ways of renunciation, meditation,
and devotion (Bhakti) amidst increasing westernisation and modernization.
He was considered to have attained the highest spiritual experience
available to the Hindus. By the early 1870s, Ramakrishna began to attract a
small group of disciples, mainly the young English-educated men.
Ramakrishna did not teach a structured set of ideas. In his search for
religious truth or the realisation of God he lived with mystics of other faiths
like Muslims and Christians, and was able to realize the fundamental
oneness of all religions and emphasised that Krishna, Hari, Ram, Christ,
Allah are different names for the same God. Therefore, he again and again
emphasised that there were many roads to God and salvation, and that
service of man was service of God, for man was the embodiment of God. At
the same time he also arrived at a corresponding logical conclusion that
beliefs and rituals of Hinduism should be preserved. He himself laid the
foundation of Ramakrishna Math at Belur near Calcutta with his young
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monastic disciples as nucleus to bring into existence a band of monks
dedicated to a life of renunciation and practical spirituality, from among
whom teachers and workers would be sent out to spread the universal
message of Vedanta as illustrated in the life of Ramakrishna. Although in his
teachings there was hardly any direct reference to colonial rule, there was
however an open rejection of the values imposed by western education and
the routine life of a time-bound job.
After the death of Ramakrishna in 1886, one of his disciples,
Narendranath Datta popularly called as Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902),
popularised his religious message and tried to put it in a form that would suit
the needs of contemporary Indian society. He infused into this discourse a
missionary zeal. He condemned the other reform movements as elitist and
invoked the ideal of social service. Like his Guru, he also emphasised, “The
best way to serve God was to serve the poor people”. To the educated
Indians, he said, “So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I
hold every man a traitor, who having been educated at their expense, pays
not the least heed to them”. Emphasising social action he said, “Knowledge
unaccompanied by action in the actual world in which we live is useless”. He
too, like his Guru, proclaimed the essential oneness of all religions and
condemned any narrowness in religious matters. Thus, he wrote in 1898,
“For our own motherland a junction of the two great systems, Hinduism and
Islam...is the only hope”. At the same time, he was convinced of the superior
approach of the Indian philosophical tradition. He himself' subscribed to
Vedanta which he declared to be a fully rational system.

Vivekananda condemned the caste system and the Hindu emphasis

on rituals, ceremonies, superstitions and “touch-me-not attitude” of the
Hindus in religious matters. He cautioned, “If this goes on for another
century, every one of us will be in a lunatic asylum”. Vivekananda
criticised Indians for having lost touch with the rest of the world and
becoming stagnant and mummified. He wrote: “The fact of our isolation from
all other nations of the world is the cause of our degeneration and its only
remedy is getting back into the current of the rest of the world. Motion is
the sign of life”. He urged the people to imbibe the spirit of liberty,
equality, and free-thinking.

Having heard about the proposed World Parliament of Religions,

Vivekananda raised funds for his travel expenses to the United States. He
left Bombay on 31 May 1893 and arrived in Chicago on 11 September. His
speech in the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893 made him
famous overnight and won support and acclaim for the Mission. The keynote
of his opening address was the need for a healthy blend of spiritualism of
71
the East and materialism of the West into a new harmony to produce
happiness for mankind. He also used the platform to show to the world the
true or humanitarian side of Hinduism, “I am proud to belong to a religion
which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We
believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I
am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the
refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth”. He gave several
lectures on Vedanta in the USA and in London before returning to India in
1897. India became almost synonymous with Hinduism, and both attained
high levels of prestige and renown.
Swami Vivekananda’s four years in the West greatly changed his
position in contemporary Hinduism. News reached India of his success at
the World Parliament and of his travels throughout the United States and
England. He received a warm welcome from westerners, considerable
publicity, and a small but growing circle of disciples. In 1897, Vivekananda
founded the Ramakrishna Mission with its headquarters at Belur near
Calcutta to carry on humanitarian relief and social work. The Mission had
many branches in different parts of the country and carried on social service
by opening schools, hospitals and dispensaries, orphanages, libraries, etc. It
thus laid emphasis not on personal salvation but on social good or social
service.
The restored Hinduism that Vivekananda wished for was not based
on social criticism, but on selfless action by the dedicated followers of
Ramakrishna, who would find their salvation through social service, and at
the same time prove the superiority of their beliefs. Begun with the
teachings of a traditional Sanyasi, this socio-religious movement drew into it
young members of the English-educated elite thus creating an acculturative
movement. It also proved to be successful among non-Hindus of the West
under Vivekananda’s leadership and in so doing was the first Hindu
movement to explore a totally new source of support. When Vivekananda
died, he left his ideas, plus the less structured teachings of Ramakrishna
and a social service organization. The major pieces existed, but only in the
twentieth century would these fuse together and create a successful socio-
religious movement.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. What was Tattvabodhini Sabha?
Answer.

72
b. Name two leaders of Prarthna Samaj.
Answer.

c. Who was Swami Vivekanand?

Answer.

d. What was the Shuddhi movement?

Answer.

4.8. SUMMARY
Students, in this lesson you have learnt about the arousing national
consciousness in India in the second half of the 19th century. It was British
rule and its direct and indirect consequences which provided the material,
moral and intellectual conditions for the development of a national
movement in India. The spirit of reform embraced almost the whole of India.
Since Hindu society was dominated and governed by religious conceptions
of Hinduism, no religious reform movement could avoid a socio-reform
section in its programme. According to Raja Ram Mohan Roy and early
religious reformers, religious renovation was the vital condition for revising
the social structure from a decadent to a healthy basis. That is why the
socio-reform programme became part of the total programme of religious
reform movements. Therefore, the first national awakening of the Indian
people took predominantly a religious form. The early religious reformers
endeavoured to extend the principle of individual liberty to the sphere of
religion. In fact, these religious reform movements, i.e., the Brahmo Samaj,
the Prarthana Samaj, the Arya Samaj, Ramakrishan Mission and others,
were in different degrees, made an effort to recast the old religion into a new
form suited to meet the needs of a new society. Its leaders like Raja Ram
Mohan Roy, Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Atmaram Pandurang, Swami
Vivekananda, etc. became the torch-bearers of Indian nationalism and
aroused national consciousness in the minds of millions of Indians. They
fought the caste system, monopoly of the Brahmins, and the ban on going to
a foreign country as much as they fought polytheism and idolatry. They
attacked all this because they were obstacles to national progress, which
required as its vital pre-condition, national unity based on the principles of
73
equality and liberty of individuals and groups. This awakening deepened and
broadened in the subsequent decades and found increasingly secular form.
The modern religious movements spread far and wide, and covered various
parts of India like Brahmo Samaj in Bengal, Prarthana Samaj in
Maharashtra, the Arya Samaj in Punjab and in North West Provinces,
and the Ramakrishna Mission in Bengal in the East. Despite being regional
in scope and content and confined to a particular religion, their general
perspectives were remarkably similar; they were regional and religious
manifestations of a common consciousness.

4.9 REFERENCES
Irfan Habib, A People’s History of India: The National Movement: Origins
and Early Phase, to 1918, Vol. 30, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2014.
Kenneth W. Jones, The New Cambridge History of India: Socio Religious
Reform Movements in British India, New Delhi: Foundation Books, 1994.

4.10 FURTHER READINGS

Ishita Banerjee Dube, A History of Modern India, Delhi: Cambridge
University Press, 2014.
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition, New Delhi: Orient
Blackswan, 2004.
A.R. Desai, Social Background of Indian Nationalism, New Delhi: Sage
Publication, 2016. (first published in 1948)

4.11. MODEL QUESTIONS

1. Critically examine the important factors which led to the rise of modern
nationalism in Indiain the second half of the 19th century.
2. Examine the rationalistic and humanistic content of the religious reform
movements of the 19th century. Evaluate their role in the making of
modern India.
3. Explain the role played by Raja Rammohan Roy and his Brahmo Samaj
in bringing about the national awareness.
4. Recognise the Prarthana Samaj as an institution that worked for
religious as well as social reform.
5. Explain the ideology of the Arya Samaj and its contributors to social and
religious reforms.
6. Examine the contribution of the Ramakrishna Mission to India’s
awakening in the nineteenth century.

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LESSON 5
SOCIO-RELIGIOUS SOCIAL REFORM: MUSLIMS AND
SIKHS

Structure
5.0. Objectives
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Socio-Religious Social Reform: Muslims
5.3. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Ali Khan and the Aligarh Movement
5.4. Deoband School
5.5. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and the Ahmadiyas
5.6. Socio-Religious Social Reform among the Sikhs: Singh Sabha
5.7. Summary
5.8. References
5.9 Further Readings
5.10 Model Questions

5.0. OBJECTIVES
Students, after reading this lesson you will be able to:
 know why the movements for religious reform were late in emerging
among the Muslims?
 know about the contribution of various socio-religious reform
movements amongst the Muslims and the Sikhs in arousing national
sentiments.
 learn about Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s Aligarh Movement, Deoband
School, and Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s Ahmadiya Movement, and Singh
Sabha.

5.1. INTRODUCTION
Students, in the previous chapter we learnt about the various socio-
religious reform movements which took place among the Hindus, who were
quick to avail themselves of the new education and applied the principles of
liberalism and rationalism to Hinduism, weeding out many of the corrupt and
irrational elements to suit the new colonial environment. However, the national
awakening among the Indian Muslims took place at a slower rate than
among the Hindus. In this chapter, we will discuss the reasons why the
movements for religious reform were late in emerging among the Muslims? This
chapter will mainly focus on the Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s Aligarh Movement,
Deoband School, and Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s Ahmadiya Movement, in
75
modernizing the Muslim community. Just like among the Hindus and Muslims,
some socio- religious reform and socio-religious revival movements did take
place among the Sikhs also. Among them all the Singh Sabha contributions has
been discussed in detail.

5.2. SOCIO-RELIGIOUS SOCIAL REFORM: MUSLIMS

Students, for Hindus the advent of the British on the Indian subcontinent
meant only a change of masters. In the past also Hindus proved receptive to
their foreign masters like Indo-Greeks (Iran), Sakas (Central Asia), Kushans
(north-western border of China) and later under the Turko-Afghans and
Mughals. For Hindus the coming of the British was only “one imperialist
sitting in the seat of another”. This attitude on the part of the Hindus towards the
British and their civilization brought them many advantages. The Hindus were,
indeed, the main, if not the only, beneficiaries of the British rule. By embracing
western education and culture, they became trusted subjects in the eyes of the
new rulers, and by learning the English language, they secured government
jobs for themselves. This English and western education not just helped them in
getting a government job but also exposed them to the principles of liberalism,
i.e., national unification, individual liberty, democracy, equal rights of men,
representative institutions and rationalism that were then prevalent in Western
Europe and North America and thus, a group of Hindu intellectual class was
born. The concepts of nationalism and liberalism helped them develop political
consciousness among their community by organizing revivalist and reform
movements. Consequently, the nineteenth century, witnessed a significant wave
of socio-religious reform movements that spread among the Hindus first.
Probably the best example illustrating this is the emergence, as early as 1828,
of Brahmo Samajunder the leadership of Raja Rajarammohan Roy. Having
benefited from modern education provided by westerners, Roy sought to reform
and modernize his community. A.R. Desai states that “The pioneers of
nationalism in all countries were always the modern intelligentsia
...” and in the case of India “it was predominantly from the Hindu community
that the first sections of the Indian intelligentsia ... sprang,” hence the latter
became the “pioneers of Indian nationalism”.
For the Hindus it meant only a change of masters, but for the Muslims, it
meant the loss of power, position, wealth and dignity. When Muslim
hegemony was gone and real power lay with the British, the Muslims would not,
could not, forget that they had once ruled over the land. Muslims became too
proud of their past glory to submit to the British. Their reaction was bitter
and truculent. As a result, they developed a hostile attitude towards the British
whom they accused of expropriating their prestige. This made the Muslim
community shy away from everything associated with the British, including their
culture, language, and education. Also, Muslims overwhelmingly objected to the
76
western education provided by the foreign Christian missionaries because the
purpose of the latter was “neither the education of the Indian natives nor the
eradication of backwardness, but only the propagation of Christian ideas”. Thus,
prevented their children from attending British- patronized educational
institutions throughout the different Indian provinces. The fact that the Muslims
were not pre-disposed to absorb “alien ideas, methods and language of the new
rulers”; failed them “to grasp the opportunities available in the new structure of
government” and largely remained backward, were reduced to poverty and
destitution. S. Hay attributes this Muslim degeneration partly to the fact that the
areas where Muslims were present, namely the northern regions, were the
last to come under the British rule.
It was mainly after the Revolt of 1857 that modern ideas of religious
reform began to appear among the Muslims. A beginning in this direction was
made when the Muhammedan Literary Society was founded at Calcutta in 1863
by Nawab Abdul Latif. The Society was established, in Latif's own words,
“To educate the Muslims in western learning through English medium and to
prepare them equal to the educated Hindus and the English men in social
intercourse”. This Society promoted discussion of religious, social, and political
questions in the light of modern ideas and encouraged upper and middle-class
Muslims to take to western education. Gradually, an intelligentsia trained in
modern education came into being, who in course of time, started a number of
religious-revivalist and even religious-reform movements among them. These
movements were, however, not so powerful as their counterparts among the
Hindus. Besides, most of them lacked the national note. Let us discuss some of
them.

5.3. SIR SAYYID AHMAD KHAN AND THE ALIGARH MOVEMENT

The most important reformer among the Muslims was Sayyid Ahmad Khan
(1817-1898). He was born in 1817 to one of the few Ashraf families of Delhi
where education was held in high esteem. He was educated in the Quran and
the sciences. He received an honorary law degree from the University of
Edinburgh. He was a widely read person and studied books on mathematics,
medicine, Persian, Arabic, Urdu, etc. His elder brother had set up a printing
press in Urdu. It was the first one in Delhi. After his father’s death, he took
up employment with his brother’s journal as an editor. He rejected an offer of
employment from the Mughal court despite his family being employed in the
Mughal court for generations. He was aware of the Mughal Empire’s
diminishing power. Therefore, he had joined the service of the Company as
a judicial officer until his retirement in 1877. He believed that contemporary
Muslim society was oriented towards the past, while the Indian environment
had been completely changed by British rule. Therefore, he lamented, the
Muslim nation was decaying rapidly and the greatest obstacle to its
77
renaissance was its seclusion and non-acceptance of western education.
During the Mutiny of 1857, Sayyid Ahmad remained loyal to the British,
yet this event reshaped his life, and gave him a cause that he served until
his death. As the events of 1857 ended, the British chose to throw the cover
of responsibility on the Muslim aristocracy alone. As a matter of fact, the
British had always regarded the Muslims as their archenemy in India due to
the fact that they (the British) had unseated them from power, and the fact
that the insurgents endeavoured to restore Bahadur Shah II, the Mughal
Emperor, to power convinced the British enough to assume that the Muslim
leaders were behind the planning and leading of the uprising. In order to end
British suspicion and to create a bond with them, he organized a celebration
in honour of the continuance of British rule. In 1859, he published his
famous Urdu treatise Asbab-Baghawat-i-Hind (Causes of the Indian Revolt).
The object of this monograph was the study of the causes, mainly political,
that had inevitably led Muslims, with others, to the violent outbreak which he
regarded as primarily a sepoy war. The treatise was dictated by his desire to
help the government acquire a just understanding of the truths about the
Revolt and to defend the Muslims against its bitter consequences. He cited
British ignorance and aggressive expansion policies as the chief cause of
the Revolt. Of the 500 copies printed, 498 were sent to England and one to
the Government of India and the last copy was retained by himself.
The anti-Muslim sentiments and discrimination against the Muslims by
the British government made Sayyid realised that the Muslims needs to
make peace with their past and needs to adapt themselves to British rule.
He believed that Muslim society could move ahead only if rigid orthodoxy
was abandoned and pragmatism was adopted. Therefore, advised Muslims
to embrace western education and take up government service.He began to
discuss the need to translate European works of science and the arts into
the languages of north India. In 1863, he travelled to Calcutta and spoke
before the Muslim Literary Society where he called for the study of
European science and technology, arguing that nothing in Islam forbade
such learning.
In 1864, he founded the Scientific Society in Ghazipur but in 1866,
after his transfer to Aligarh, the main office of the Scientific Society was also
transferred to Aligarh. In addition to the translation of English works into
Urdu, the Scientific Society was also intended as a means to “provide a
basis for mutual understanding and friendship between the British and
the Muslims”. Two years after its foundation, the Scientific Society launched
an English-Urdu journal called The Scientific Society Paper, which later
became known as the Aligarh Institute Gazette. This journal primarily aimed
to spread the ideas of social reform, apprise the British colonial government

78
with the thoughts and points of view of the inhabitants of India regardless of
their creed and to wash away the misconception between the Muslims and
the British government and bring them close to each other.In 1866, Sayyid
Ahmad created the British-Indian Association of the North-Western
Provinces as another expression of his desire for closer relations with the
British.
In order to closely watch the educational system of England, Sayyid
left with his son to England in 1869 and stayed there for seventeen months
studying English educational institutions like Oxford and Cambridge
University. He started believing that there was a correlation between worldly
success and cultural superiority. The older generation of Muslims in India
were, in his view, better educated and hence, able to occupy positions of
power. Now, the equivalent education was confined to Englishmen in
England. That education had to spread in India, but in a way as to bring
about a confluence of religion and education. He was tremendously
impressed by modern scientific thought and felt it must be adopted by the
Muslim community. On his return, he worked all his life to reconcile it with
Islam. This he did, first of all, by declaring that the Quran alone was the
authoritative work for Islam and all other Islamic writings were secondary. In
his view any interpretation of the Quran that conflicted with human reason,
science or nature was in reality a misinterpretation. All his life he struggled
against blind obedience to tradition, dependence on custom, ignorance and
irrationalism. He urged the people to develop a critical approach and
freedom of thought. “So long as freedom of thought is not developed, there
can be no civilized life”, he declared. He also warned against fanaticism,
narrow-mindedness, and exclusiveness, and urged students and others to
be broadminded and tolerant. He insisted that “It was all right to wear shoes
for prayer in the mosque, to participate in Hindu and Christian celebrations
(and), to eat at a European-style table”. Sayyid Ahmad defended his actions by
the validity of Ijtihad (free thinking), and the need for new interpretations as a
method of adjustment to changed circumstances.

His belief that the religious and social life of the Muslims could be
improved only by imbibing modern western scientific knowledge and culture
led him to set up a committee known as Committee Striving for Educational
Progress of Muslims. Under this committee another committee was
established, which was named as Fund Committee for the establishment of a
Muslim college. For this purpose, he toured across the country and
galvanized Indian Muslims to raise money for the foundation of a school for
boys in Aligarh by warning them: “If the Muslims do not take to the system of
education introduced by the English they will not only remain a backward
community, but will sink lower until there will be no hope of recovery left to
79
them….how we can remain true Muslims or serve Islam if we sink into
ignorance”.
Therefore, as an official he founded schools in many towns and had
many western books translated into Urdu. In 1875, he founded at Aligarh the
Muhammedan Anglo-Oriental College as a centre for spreading western
sciences and culture without prejudice to their religion. The college got a
personal donation of Rs 10,000 from Viceroy Lord Northbrooke. What is
more important, Sayyid Ahmed always stressed the need to import
western education to upper-c1ass Muslims. Through its programme he
wanted to produce future Muslim leaders who could be as capable as the
Hindu majority and take the defence of Muslim community. The aim of the
Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College was “to form a class of persons,
Muhammadan in religion, Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in
opinions, and in intellect”- Sayyid Ahmad Khan. It is interesting to note that
in spite of the fact that this college was intended to produce a class of
Muslim intelligentsia in order to defend their religion and keep pace or
succeed more than other Indian communities, notably the Hindus, he by no
means intended to be communal. This college was open to all the
communities including the Hindus. The rationale behind this was that Sayyid
could not refuse admission to non- Muslims, particularly Hindus, since
they contributed significantly both financially and materially to the founding
of this college. For example, in 1898, there were 64 Hindu and 285 Muslim
students in the college. Out of the seven Indian teachers, two were Hindu,
one of them being Professor of Sanskrit. Later in the year 1920, this college
grew into the Aligarh Muslim University. In 1886, he also founded the
Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental Educational Conference to popularize and
encourage the fusion of English and Islamic education. Throughout his life
spread of western education infused with Islamic culture remained his
primary concern.
It is interesting to note that Sayyid’s educational reforms were meant
only for the Muslim boys and not for the Muslim girls. Indeed, he considered
modern education dangerous for women. He strongly advised Muslim women
to adhere to the traditional system of education that alone would help them in
their moral and material well-being. Once educated, Muslim men, he felt,
would in turn educate their female relatives. Suitable curriculum for girls
would be “domestic crafts, respect for their elders, affection for the husband,
care of the children and understanding of religious tenets”. He approved only
these aspects of education for Muslim women. In particular he wrote in
favour of raising the women's status in society by advocating removal of
Purdah, condemning the customs of polygamy and easy divorce.
Initially, Sayyid was a great believer in religious toleration. He believed

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that all religions had a certain underlying unity which could be called
practical morality. Believing that a person's religion was his or her private
affair, he roundly condemned any sign of religious bigotry in personal
relations. He was also opposed to communal friction. In fact, he considered
both Hindus and Muslims as one Qaum (nation), arguing that “The word
Qaum is used for the inhabitants of a country, even though they have
characteristics of their own”. Again, “By the word Qaum, I mean both
Hindus and Muslims. That is the way in which I define the word Qaum”.
Appealing to Hindus and Muslims to unite, he said in 1883: “Now both of us
live on the air of India, drink the holy waters of the Ganga and Jumna. We
both feed upon the products of the Indian soil. We are together in life and
death, living in India both of us have changed our blood, the colour of our
bodies has become the same, our features have become similar; the
Musalmans have adopted numerous Hindu customs, the Hindus have
accepted many Muslim traits of conduct, we became so fused that we
developed the new language of Urdu, which was neither our language nor
that of the Hindus. Therefore, if we except that part of our lives which
belongs to God, then undoubtedly in consideration of the fact that we both
belong to the same country, we are a nation, and the progress and
welfare of the country, and both of us, depend on our unity, mutual
sympathy, and love, while our mutual disagreement, obstinacy and
opposition and ill-feeling are sure to destroy us”. Unfortunately, his dream of
internal tranquillity remained unfulfilled.
By 1887, his stance changed and turned anti-Hindu after the formation
of the Indian National Congress. Encouraged by the British, he began to
talk of Hindu domination to prevent his followers from joining the national
movement. On 28 December 1887, he delivered a remarkably intemperate
speech at Lucknow against the Indian National Congress by calling it
essentially a party of Bengali Hinduswho could not best represent the
viewpoint of a Muslim population, full of appeals to regional, communal and
casteist sentiments. He was wary of the rise of Indian nationalism as he
thought power would pass into the hands of the Hindus alone. He advocated
Muslims to have loyalty to the British. In his own words, “We do not want to
become subjects of the Hindus instead of the subjects of the people of the
Book”. It could hardly be a coincidence that he was awarded a knighthood
(Sir) within four days of the speech (on 1 January 1888)! Two years later, in
1889, along with Theodore Beck, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan organized the
United Indian Patriotic Association as a counter to the Congress. Once more
he sought to emphasize loyalty to the British. In the coming years he was
regarded as the father of the ‘Two-Nation Theory’ which says that Hindus
and Muslims cannot be one nation, leading to the partition of country in
1947.
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This was unfortunate, though basically he was not a communalist. He
only wanted the backwardness of the Muslim middle and upper classes to
go. His politics was the result of his firm belief that immediate political
progress was not possible because the British government could not be
easily dislodged. On the other hand, any hostility by the officials might prove
dangerous to the educational effort which he saw as the need of the hour.
He believed that only when Indians will become as modern in their thinking
and actions as the English, only then they can hope to successfully
challenge the foreign rule. He therefore advised all Indians and particularly
the educationally backward Muslims to remain aloof from politics for some
time to come. The time for politics he said had not yet come. In fact, he had
become so committed to his college and the cause of education that he was
willing to sacrifice all other interests to them. Consequently, to prevent the
orthodox Muslims from opposing his college, he virtually gave up his
agitation in favour of religious reform. For the same reason, he would not do
anything to offend the government and, on the other hand, encouraged
communalism and separatism. This was, of course, a serious political error,
which was to have harmful consequences in later years. Moreover, some of
his followers deviated from his broadmindedness and tended later to glorify
Islam and its past while criticising other religions. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan
was helped by a band of loyal followers who were collectively described as
the Aligarh School like Chirag Ali, the Urdu poet Altaf Husain Hali, Nazir
Ahmad, and Maulana Shibli Numani.

5.4. DEOBAND MOVEMENT

Throughout the centuries after the Muslim conquest of north India the
Ulama, as teachers, interpreters of religious law, and theologians, were
closely linked to political power. In many ways they functioned similarly to the
Brahman priests during the Hindu period. The decline of the Mughal Empire
and its replacement by the British threatened them and, during the second
half of the nineteenth century, led to movement of restoration with
objectives of propagating pure teachings of the Quran and Hadis among
Muslims, a resurgence of their own class and keeping alive the spirit of Jihad
against the foreign rulers. The Deoband Movement was begun at the
DarulUloom (or Islamic academic centre) Deoband in Saharanpur district
(United Provinces) in 1866 by two veterans of the Revolt, Muhammad
QasimNanotavi (1833-77) and Rashid Ahmad Gangohi (1828-1905) to train
religious teachers for the Muslim community but along the lines of western
education, leading to the emergence of a ‘Protestant Islam’. The seminary
they set up at Deoband took its curriculum from an earlier one in the
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Farangi Mahal(foreign quarters) of Lucknow. This seminary did not function
as a part of a mosque where learning was an adjunct to the students’
religious observances.
The students of Deoband attended a formal residential college with a
permanent staff, run by public funding and not by endowment. Their learning
was continually assessed on the basis of examinations. Students got
lessons in the Shariat (the law, based on scriptures and religious
knowledge), and the Tariqab (path derived from religious experience) from
the Ulema as guides. Uneducated Muslims could not make judgments on
belief or practice. Rigidly orthodox and hostile to Sayyid Ahmed for his
theological innovations and political loyalism alike, Deoband attracted
relatively poor students who could not afford western education, and
remained influential through the Madrasateachers it produced. Although it
was modelled entirely on western educational institutions, the Deoband
Seminary actually played a significant role in developing a unified and
orthodox Islam in India. The Deobandis, while accepting Sufism, rejected
numerous ceremonies and the authority of Pirs who claimed sanctity by their
descent rather than by their learning. Knowledge granted authority and not
inheritance. Pilgrimages to saints’ tombs, and the annual death rites of a
particular saint (the Urs ), also lay outside acceptable Islamic practice.
The questions of ‘society and State’ were as important for them as
those of ‘belief and practices of the individual’. Rashid Ahmad Gangohi
advised the Muslim community in India to cooperate with the Congress in its
activities. The Deoband School declared in unambiguous terms that the
concept of nationality was based upon the unity of all religious groups and
did not contravene any Islamic principle. In 1888, it issued a Fatwa (religious
decree) against Sayyid Ahmed Khan’s organizations, the United Patriotic
Association and the Mohammaden Anglo-Oriental Association. This
declaration created a gulf between the Deoband and Aligarh movements.
Mahmud-ul-Hasan, the new Deoband leader, gave political and
intellectual content to the religious ideas of the school. He worked out
the synthesis of Islamic principles and nationalist aspirations. The Jamait-ul-
Ulema gave a concrete shape to Hasan’s ideas of protection of the religious
and political rights of the Muslims in the overall context of Indian unity and
national objective.
Among the supporters of the Deoband school was Shibli Numani
(1857- 1914), a profound scholar of Persian and Arabic and a prolific writer
in Urdu. He was in favour of reforming the traditional Islamic system of
education by cutting down its formal studies and including the English language
and European sciences. He founded the Nadwat-al-Ulama and Dar-ul-Uloom in
Lucknow in 1894-96, where he tried to give effect to his educational ideas.
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Shibli admired the Congress for its high idealism and for its concern for the
welfare and advancement of the Indian people. He believed that Muslims were
citizens of India and they owed loyalty to their motherland. He was
convinced that “The Muslims could, jointly with the Hindus, create a State in
which both could live honourably and happily”. As a result of these reform
movements, the Muslim urban society started taking to modern ways. The
modern awakening among the Muslims led to a decline in the practice of
polygamy, and widow remarriage was encouraged. The great political
upheavals of this period thus helped in bringing about a renaissance of Indian
Islam and a reorientation of Muslim society.
Notwithstanding the obvious differences between the different Hindu and
Muslim reformative schools of thought, they showed a keen consciousness of
the need for religious reconstruction and moral reform and a keenness to
unite all those professing the same faith. They fostered a rational outlook and
individualism, which is the basis of modern secular thought.

5.5. MIRZA GHULAM AHMAD AND THE AHMADIYAHS

The Ahmadiyahs began with the career of one man, the messianic
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908). Mirza Ghulam was born in Qadiyan, a
small village in the district of Gurdaspur, Punjab, on 13 February 1835. His
family once held extensive estates that were seized by the Sikhs when they
gained control of the Punjab. A few villages remained, but the young Ahmad
grew up in an atmosphere of frustration over the decline in his family’s status
and wealth. From his childhood, Mirza Ghulam exhibited a religious bent. He
had no formal schooling except informal tuitions at home and received his
education in Quran and Hadith. Later his father sent him to Sialkot where he
read law and oversaw a number of legal cases instituted to regain the
family’s lost estates but without any success. While in Sialkot Mirza Ghulam
met several Christian missionaries with whom he used to have long
discussions and became acquainted with their zeal and programmes for the
spread of Christianity. He was pained to see how Christian propaganda
misled the ignorant Muslims to win converts. In 1868, he returned to
Qadiyan and in 1876 his father died. The death of his father brought a
radical change in his life, and ceased to concern himself with the family
estates and his religious tendencies began to take a more definite shape
and claimed to have hear revelations. Following the advent of the Arya
Samaj in the Punjab in 1877, Mirza Ghulam could realize the threat posed
by militant Hinduism.
He entered upon a study of the major faiths then current in India,
which deepened his appreciation of the teachings of Islam, till he emerged
as a champion of Islam. He was greatly depressed by the feeling that there
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was little understanding of true Islamic values even among Muslim
divines. He condemned the existing state of Islamic religion engulfed in
rituals, superstition and little regard for Islam and its sublime teachings.
By the time Mirza Ghulam Ahmad had arrived at forty years of age, his
mind was possessed by a strong urge to undertake the championship of Islam
vis-a-vis all other contemporary faiths. Spurred by a commitment to revive Islam
reinforced by revelatory experiences, and being aware of the growing threat
posed by Christianity and Hinduism, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, in 1880, at the age
of 40, began to publish a four volume work from 1880-4, Barahin-i- Ahmadiyah
(Proofs of Ahmadiyah), in which he attempted to refute the claims of several
Hindu reform movements that they were superior to Islam. This work was
favourably received by the Muslims. In a registered letter he offered to send a
copy of the Barahin to Swami Dayananda and to debate him over the truth of
Islam and its superiority over Hinduism. Dayananda failed to respond. In August
1893, Mirza reported a vision in which he saw that Dayananda would die in
the near future, a prophecy that was fulfilled in October. Ahmad responded
with numerous attacks against different elements of the Arya Samaj
ideology. He found a particularly vulnerable point with Dayananda’s concept
of Niyog, the idea that barren women or virgin widows might have children
without being married. This was one of Dayananda’s teachings that found
little or no acceptance among members of the Arya Samaj, but was often
used to embarrass the movement. Ahmad published Radd-i-Niyog (The
Rejection of Niyog) in 1895. He also predicted that Pandit Lekh Ram would
not live long, a prophecy that was fulfilled in l897. Nevertheless
confrontations between Mirza Ghulam and Arya Samaj lasted until his
death in 1908.
Mirza Ghulam described his basic ideas, his claims to special authority,
and his programme for rejuvenating Islam in Barahin. He stressed the
fundamental principles of Islam and the duties of all Muslims. In March 1899, he
claimed to have received a Divine call that God had commissioned him as the
Reformer/Renewer (Mujaddid)of the 14th century (Hijra)of the Islamic era and
had entrusted the revival of Islam to him. He proposed to defend Islam from the
infamous attacks of Christian missionaries and Arya Samaj. In pursuance of
this mission, he laid the foundation of the Ahmadiyah Movement in Islam on
23 March 1884. He also announced that God had given him the right to accept
bai’at, the kind of homage paid to a religious leader by a disciple. There began
to grow up a little group to whom it appeared that a Mujaddid, a worthy defender
of Islam, had risen, and accepted the guidance of Mirza Ahmad in all spiritual
matters. These sentiments, however, soon gave way to almost universal
opposition as the Mirza Ghulam began to make one extravagant claim one after
another for himself. He announced that he was both the Promised Messiah and

85
the coming Mahdi, whom the Muslims believed would return to earth. The
conservative Muslim authorities secured a Fatwa (religious decrees) against
him and his disciples as heretics, forbade the orthodox to have marriage
relations with them and sanctioned their persecution. Later, he also claimed to
be an incarnation of the Hindu God Krishna and Jesus return to earth.
Thenceforward, he got engaged in preaching, teaching, and writing, with the
purpose of winning and fortifying his increasing followers and defending himself
against the attacks of a growing number of enemies – Muslim, Hindu, and
Christian.
Ahmadiyah Movement described itself as the standard bearer of
Mohammedan renaissance. The founder was greatly influenced by western
liberalism, theosophy and religious-reform movements of the Hindus. He
realized the necessity of restoring Islam to its true intent and pristine form,
which had been lost through the centuries. He emphasized the humanitarian
and universal character of Islam. He asked his followers to believe in one
God, to give up worship of tombs, and useless rituals and customs. He
interpreted the Quran to justify the gradual elimination of slavery. He
explained Purdah and the Muslim institution of divorce as solutions to worst
evils. He asked his followers to perform the five daily prayers, obey God and
his Prophet and to maintain high morality and righteousness in their daily
lives. He redefined Jihad to exclude the concept of holy war as believed by
theologians.
The goals of the Ahmadiyah Movement were announced in its first
meeting in 1892. Eighty individuals attended and such a meeting was
held each year afterwards. In 1892, 500 members travelled to Qadian from
Punjab and the North-West. People came from as far east as Aligarh and
from as far west as Mecca. According to Kenneth W. Jones, these were: to
propagate Islam, to promote welfare of new converts to Islam in Europe and
America, to spread righteousness, purity and morality throughout the world,
to eradicate evil customs and practices, and to be loyal to the British
government and appreciate the good work done by them.
In 1897, the Ahmadiyahs began publishing a weekly newspaper Al-
Hakam to propagate their cause. Ghulam Ahmad asked the Ahmadiyahs to
list themselves separately in the census of 1901. Membership of the sect
stood at 1,098 as listed in the Al-Hakam. In 1902, two journals were
launched; the first one was Badrand the second was Review of Religions
which was published in Urdu and English and helped in spreading their
ideology in the western world. The Ahmadi community in colonial India
tended to be better educated and more prosperous as compared to other
Muslims. By 1900, his followers began to preach in places as far flung as
Kenya, Afghanistan, the Fiji Islands and established centres in Europe with a

86
view to sharing their approaches to modernity and challenging western ideas
of their religion that the accounts of Christian missionaries had discredited.
He wrote extensively in Arabic, Persian and Urdu till his death in 1908.
It also spread western liberal education among the Indian Muslims. It
started a network of schools and colleges for that purpose and published
periodicals and books, both in English and vernaculars. Soon, the Muslims
took to education and created a class of intelligentsia. They also
appeared in the field of commerce and industries. The progressive elements
among these new educated Muslims and Muslim merchants and
industrialists steadily evolved a national outlook and took to the road of
nationalism in politics and democratic reform in social matters.
The ideology of the Ahmadiyahs appealed at first to middle-class,
literate Muslims; however, because of its location in Qadiyan, the
Ahmadiyahs began to attract more members from the less educated, poor
rural classes. The origins of its members produced with the Ahmadis a
bipolar pattern. Among the literates were doctors, attorneys, landowners and
businessmen. They tended to come from the district towns rather than from
the few major cities, and were somewhat separated from a growing rural and
less affluent membership. As with other Islamic movements of return, the
Ahmadis attempted to remove all error and to return to what they considered
the ‘true’ fundamentals of their religion. The role of Mirza Ghulam, however,
led to clashes within Islam, particularly with the Ulama who did not consider
Mirza Ghulam a qualified religious leader. The aggressive militant stance of
the movement brought it into direct conflict with Hindus, Sikhs and
Christians among others. The acculturative Ahmadis adjusted their
doctrines to the reality of British power and the fact of western civilization as
was most clearly illustrated by their reinterpretation of Jihad. Conversion and
proselytism became the main goals of the Ahmadis as they proved uniquely
able to win converts from outside of the subcontinent. Success was
accompanied in the twentieth century by internal division and drove their
community into two distinct organizations following the death of Mirza
Ahmad’s successor, Maulana Nur-ad-Din in 1914, into Qadiyani and Lahori.
The Ahmadiyya/Qadiani Movement group affirmed Ahmad's messianic
status and a Lahori, a second group regarded him as a reformer, but
otherwise adhering to mainstream Islamic beliefs that believe Muhammad to
have been the final Prophet and conflict at all levels continued to be a by-
product of the Ahmadis. His theology was thus a definite deviation from
orthodox Islamic theology and thus a heresy to orthodox Muslims.

5.6. SOCIO-RELIGIOUS SOCIAL REFORM AMONG THE SIKHS:

SINGH SABHA

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Like Hindus, the work of religious and social awakening among the Sikhs had
been carried on in the later part of the 19th century by numerous sects and
organizations like the Nirankaris, the Namdharis, the Radha Swami's sect of
Beas and the Sri Guru Singh Sabhas. Among all of these organizations - the
last was the most active organization which had a vital influence in the
awakening of the Sikh community. Before the Singh Sabha, the Nirankaris
had done their works in the Northern and North-Western districts of Punjab and
the Namdharis in Sutlej area. But both the movements failed to face the
challenges posed by the Christian missionaries. In the second half of the
19th century, Singh Sabha, a powerful movement was launched with a view
to combat evils and orthodoxy that had affected the Sikh religion and to
protect the Sikhs from the fatal attacks of the Christianity.
After the annexation of the Khalsa Raj (the independent Sikh kingdom
in the Punjab founded by Ranjit Singh in 1799) by the British in 1849,
Christian missionaries increased their activities in central Punjab. The Sikhs
were disturbed by Maharaja Dalip Singh, the last Sikh ruler, renouncing his
religion and accepting evangelical Christianity in 1853. The historical
conversion of Maharaja Dalip Singh was an alarming call for the Sikhs.
Some of the other aristocratic Sikh families also adopted Christianity and the
most well-known amongst them was Raja Harnam Singh of Kapurthala.
The Sikh youth, who were educated in the missionary schools, also came
under the influence of Christianity. In the beginning of 1873, several Sikh
students at Amritsar Mission School announced that they intend to
become Christians. This incident stirred a small group of prominent Sikhs to
form the Singh Sabha of Amritsar, which held its first meeting on 1 October
1873. Among those who helped to establish the Sabha were Sir Khem Singh
Bedi, Thakur Singh Sandhawalia, Kanwar Bikram Singh of Kapurthala, and
Giani Gian Singh. Sandhawalia became its President and Giani Gian Singh
became its Secretary. The Sabha intended to restore Sikhism to its past
purity, to publish historical religious books, magazines and journals, to
propagate knowledge using Punjabi, to return Sikh apostates to their
original faith, to organize and strengthen Sikh religion and community, to
protect the Sikh Panth from the Christianity, the Islam and other religious
reform movements of India, and to involve highly placed Englishmen in the
educational programme of the Sikhs. They met every two weeks, held
anniversary celebrations, and special meetings on festival days or in
response to specific challenges by other religious groups. The Sabha soon
began to issue Hurmatas (records) of its decisions, each of which was the
result of a majority vote. The donations made by the members of the Singh
Sabha was the only source of income. They kept a regular account of its

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income and expenditure. The Singh Sabha prepared a calendar that
listed the correct dates of the births and deaths of the ten Gurus. It published
numerous tracts and books and in 1894 organized the Khalsa Tract Society
to popularize Punjabi, the Gurmukhi script, and to issue monthly tracts on
the Sikh religion. These publications inspired adherence to religious
principles, mutual help and self-discipline and the desire to serve, help and
guide others.
The management of the Amritsar Singh Sabha was in the hands of
high ranking Sikh leaders, rulers, princes, persons related to the Bedi and
the Sodhi families. They discriminated against the low caste Sikhs by not
allowing them to enter the Gurudwaras during the visiting hours of the elite
sections. They could enter the Gurudwaras only during the day time
(afternoons) and were not given the rights to make any offerings. Therefore,
the Singh Sabha failed to acquire a mass base. Also, Baba Khem Singh
Bedi being a direct descendent of Guru Nanak ji tried to wield absolute
control over the activities of the Sabha and claimed some privileges. He
wanted a well-furnished seat (just like Gurugaddi) for himself in the presence
of the Holy Granth. The progressive and radical Sikhs amongst them
protested against caste discrimination and Khem Singh Bedi’s claims for
special authority as they believed in equality and democratic principles.
Soon, the radical among the Sikhs disassociated themselves from the
activities of the Amritsar Singh Sabha to establish a separate Singh Sabha
at Lahore. The leadership of this Sabha was in the hands of the educated
and energetic men of the middle-class such as by Professor Gurmukh Singh
(Assistant Professor in Punjabi Department of the Oriental College, Lahore)
and Bhai Ditt Singh (a low caste Sikh and an effective writer). The
government officials like Sir Robert Egerton, the Governor of Punjab,
induced Lord Lansdowne, the Viceroy of India to lend its support to Lahore
Singh Sabha. 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
Singh Sabha. They extended its activities to both urban and rural areas of
Punjab. Initially, their aims were quite similar to those of Amritsar Singh
Sabha but as the activities of the Lahore Singh Sabha developed and its
popularity increased, it added a few more aims to its programme like to
collect the adulterated Sikh literature and rectify it by making some additions
and subtractions, to remove the control of the corrupt Mahants from the
Gurudwaras, etc.
Bhai Ditt Singh through his writings chided high-caste Sikhs for
denigrating converts, especially from the lower castes. He also attacked the
hereditary priests and claimants to special status as descendants of the
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Gurus. His tract, Sudan Natak (A Dream Drama), ridiculed the religious
establishment and resulted in a court case, the first of many that grew from
his writings. The Lahore Sabha soon confronted considerable opposition
within the Sikh community, and were banned from meeting in many
local Gurdwaras. Consequently, the Singh Sabha found it necessary to
erect their own Gurdwaras served by priests who accepted the Singh Sabha
ideology. Bhai Gurmukh Singh made an appeal to the Sikhsof all castes and
classes to enlist themselves as volunteers for the newly formed Sabha and
to carry their cause to every corner of Punjab. It was decided to organize
meetings and lectures, to raise subscriptions and to undertake preaching
tours for the movements. Bhai Gurmukh Singh started publishing a purely
Punjabi weekly Gurumukhi Akhbarfrom Lahore. Through their writings and
activities Sabha not only rejected the un-Sikh customs and social evils, but
also encouraged western education. Thus, both the revivalist impulse and
progressive concern were the chief characteristics of the movement.

Soon, the Lahore Sabha expanded with local branches in many of the
Punjab towns such as Taran Taran, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Bannu, Kohat,
Jalandar, Gujjarwala, Lyallpur, Patiala, Shimla, Jhelum, Ludhiana, Ambala,
Multan, Jind, and Faridkot etc. Under the leadership of Bhai Takht Singh
(1860-1937), the Ferozepore Singh Sabha opened a girls’ high school and
hostel when the education of women was still unacceptable to many Sikhs.
The Singh Sabhas of Ferozepur and Taran Taran also had female members
who were as active as their male counterparts. The Taran Taran Singh
Sabha had a special branch for its female members known as the Istri
Satsang Sabha. Other Sabhas connected with the Lahore Diwan built
orphanages, opened schools for all classes and castes, and produced a
stream of literature, tracts, journals and newspapers.
In 1880, a General Sabha was established in Amritsar to provide a
central organization for all Singh Sabhas. On 11 April 1883 this was
renamed the Khalsa Diwan, Amritsar. It included thirty-six to thirty-seven
different Singh Sabhas as well as the Lahore association. But it failed in its
objectives.
Although strong differences in membership, ideology, and programmes
divided the Amritsar and Lahore Diwans, they did cooperate in establishing a
Sikh college. Representatives of both Khalsa Diwans met in Lahore to draw
up plans for the proposed college. A Hukamnama (ruling) was issued from the
Golden Temple that requested each Sikh to give a tenth of his income for the
college project. Sympathetic Englishmen organized a committee in London to
raise funds and donations were requested from the Sikh ruling families. This
institution became a degree-granting college in 1899 and the foremost

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success of Sikh efforts in higher education.
During the 1890s, Sikhs in both wings of the Singh Sabha movement
became increasingly concerned with the question of Sikh identity; were they
or were they not part of the Hindu community? Competition with Hindu
movements had done much to fuel this discussion. Western scholars,
involved in translations of different Sikh scriptures, added further
stimulus to controversy surrounding the role and meaning of Sikhism. In
1898, the Sikh philanthropist, Sardar Dayal Singh Majithia, died leaving his
wealth to the Dayal Singh Trust. His widow contested his will with the result
that an English court had to decide whether the deceased was a Sikh or a
Hindu. Throughout 1898, 1899, and 1900, the lawsuit and the question of
Sikh identity were argued in public meetings, in the press, and through
numerous publications. The more radical Sikhs claimed that Sikhism was
separate from Hinduism. Bhai Kahan Singh, the Chief Minister of Nabha
State, published a book called Hum Hindu Nahin while others maintained it
was a subdivision of Hinduism. The Arya Samaj added more fuel to this
debate.
The plan to establish a Central Sikh organization materialized with the
founding of the Chief Khalsa Diwan on 30 October 1902. With this the Sikhs
again gathered themselves under a single platform and Singh Sabha entered a
new phase. It heralded a new era of progress and reform. Chief Khasla
Diwan was registered on 9 July 1904with the government. When it was
constituted the number of Singh Sabhas, Khalsa Diwans and other Sikh
societies was 34. Till 1920, their numbers increased to 105.
The awakening brought about by the efforts of Chief Khalsa Diwan
among the Sikh masses led to an urge for democratic control and
management of the Sikh Gurdwaras or temples. They had, for over two
hundred years, been controlled by corrupt Mahants or priests. Therefore, an
Akali Movement (also known as Gurudwara Reform Movement) an offshoot
of the Singh Sabha Movement was started. It aimed at liberating the Sikh
Gurudwaras from the control of corrupt Mahants (the post having become
hereditary). These Mahants were a loyalist and reactionary lot, enjoying
government patronage. The government tried its repressive policies against
the non-violent non- cooperation Satyagraha launched by the Akalis in 1921,
but had to bow before the popular demands. It passed the Sikh Gurudwaras
Act in 1922 (amended in 1925) which gave the control of Gurudwaras to the
Sikh masses to be administered through Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak
Committee (SGPC) as the apex body. Though the Akali Movement was a
regional movement but was not a communal one. They played a notable role
in the national liberation struggle though some dissenting voices were heard
occasionally.

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Self-Assessment Questions
a. Who was Raja Rammohan Roy?
Answer.

b. Who founded the Muhammedan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh.

Answer.

c. Name two leaders of the Deoband movement.

Answer.

_
d. Who was Mirza Ghulam Ahmad?
Answer.

e. Who wrote the book Hum Hindu Nahin?

Answer.

5.7. SUMMARY
Students, in this lesson we learnt about the socio-religious reform
movements which took place in Islam and Sikhism. The movements for religious
reform were late in emerging among the Muslims because the Muslims, plunged
into a sense of humiliation and grief at the loss of their power, and as a result,
they developed bitter feelings towards the British and hence, refused to adopt
their culture, ideas and education. It was mainly after the Revolt of 1857 that
modern ideas of religious reform began to appear among the Muslims. A
beginning in this direction was made when the Muhammedan Literary Society
was founded at Calcutta in 1863. This Society promoted discussion of religious,
social, and political questions in the light of modern ideas and encouraged
upper and middle-class Muslims to take to western education. Gradually an
intelligentsia trained in modern education came into being, who in course of
time, started a number of religious-revivalist and even religious- reform
movements among them, such as Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (Aligarh Movement),
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (Ahmadiyas), Muhammad Qasim Nanotavi, and Rashid
Ahmad Gangohi (Deobandis), etc. Sayyid Ahmed Khan emphasized that if
religion did not keep pace with and meet the demands of the time it would get
fossilized as in the case of Islam in India. In Sikhism, this renaissance in
religion was brought by the efforts of Singh Sabha. They adopted a rational
approach to tradition but also evaluated the existing socio- religious practices
92
from the position of social utility and to replace faith with rationality. The socio
religious reform movement was against backward element of traditional culture
in terms of both religious and social evils. There were differences in methods of
those reform movements but all of them were concerned with the regeneration
of society through social and educational reforms. The reformers aimed at
modernisation rather than outright westernization. The main means used for the
propagation of ideas and for the creation of favourable public opinion were the
urban communication channels such as the press, lectures, Sabhas, and
propaganda network. A favourable social climate was created to end India’s
cultural and intellectual isolation from the world. The idea was – “The society
would be preserved, while its members would be transformed”. In a way, the
social reform movement was a prelude to nationalism.

5.8. REFERENCES
Kenneth W. Jones, The New Cambridge History of India: Socio Religious
Reform Movements in British India, New Delhi: Foundation Books, 1994.
K. K. Aziz, The Making of Pakistan: A Study in Nationalism, London:
Chattos&Windus, 1967.
J. Masselos, Indian Nationalism: An History, New Delhi: Sterling Publishers
Private Limited, 1996.

5.9 FURTHER READINGS

J.S. Grewal, The New Cambridge History of India: The Sikhs of
Punjab,New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Spencer Lavan, The Ahmadiyah Movement: A History and Perspective,
Delhi: Manohar Book Service, 1974.
Ishita Banerjee Dube, A History of Modern India, Delhi: Cambridge
University Press, 2014.
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition, New Delhi: Orient
Blackswan, 2004.
A.R. Desai, Social Background of Indian Nationalism, New Delhi: Sage
Publication, 2016. (first published in 1948)

5.10 MODEL QUESTIONS

1 Explain how the arrival of the British was responsible for the
emergence of socio-religious reform movements in India.
2 The Indian Renaissance gave birth to not only socio-religious movements
but affected every aspect of Indian life. Elucidate. What were its
limitations.
3 Discuss the contribution of the Aligarh Movement towards cultural and
93
educational reforms amongst the Muslims.
4 Give a critical account of socio-religious reform movements initiated by
Muslims in India in special reference to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Sir
Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Deobandis.
5 Examine the reforms carried out by the Sikhs to make their society
enlightened.
6 Discuss the extent to which the Indian Renaissance movement
contributed towards the rise of nationalist consciousness.

94
LESSON 6

THE MODERATE PHASE OF THE INDIAN NATIONAL

CONGRESS AND GROWTH OF EXTREMISM

Structure
6.0. Objectives
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Moderate Phase: Objectives and Programmes of the Indian
National Congress during 1885-1905
6.3. The Extremist Phase: The Growth of Militant Nationalism during
1905- 1919
6.4. Summary
6.5. References
6.6. Further Readings
6.7. Model Questions

6.0. OBJECTIVES
Students, after reading this chapter you will:
 learn about the Moderate phase of the Indian National Congress.
 learn about the growth of Extremism in the Indian National Congress.
 understand the differences between the Moderates and Extremists
ideologies.

6.1. INTRODUCTION
Students, in the previous chapter you learnt about the origin and
foundation of the Indian National Congress in 1885. In the initial years, i.e.,
up to 1905, the activities of the Indian National Congress were dominated by
leaders who have often been described as moderate nationalists or
Moderates. But gradually, over the years, with increasing political
consciousness among the Indians and the failure of the British government
to accept any of the important demands of the nationalists produced
disillusionment among the politically conscious people with the principles
and constitutional methods of the dominant moderate leadership. Therefore,
giving rise to extremists or radical leadership in the Congress, which found
expression in the movement against the partition of Bengal in 1905 by Lord
Curzon. So, in this chapter a discussion will be made on the ideological
differences, methods, programmes and achievements of the two wings of the
Indian National Congress, i.e., the Moderates and the Extremists.

95
6.2. MODERATE PHASE: OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAMMES OF
THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS DURING 1885-1905
In the first stage of its existence (1885-1905), the vision of the Indian
National Congress was dim, vague and confused. The party grew in strength
and size under the inspiring leadership of the founding fathers like
Dadabhai Naoroji, P.N. Mehta, D.E. Wacha, W.C. Banerjee, S.N.
Banerjee, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, etc. Congress started as an organization
of the country's elite and educated middle class, with the sole aim of
securing constitutional reforms from the British government and made an
appeal to the principle of democracy. But they did not ask for the immediate
fulfilment of their goals. They believed in constitutional methods and
favoured the policy of 3 P’s, i.e., Protest, Prayer and Petition. This period is
referred to as the period of Moderate politics.
During early years of the Congress there was no revolutionary fervour
in its speeches, resolutions or activities as the early Indian nationalists or
moderates believed that a direct struggle for the political emancipation of the
country was not yet possible. Accordingly, phraseology of the Congress was
one of prayer and petition rather than of challenge, force, violence and defiance.
They sent regular deputations to Britain to educate the British public opinion in
India’s favour. Congress only claimed a share in the government of the country,
and not freedom from the British rule. Loyalty to the British Crown was loudly
and repeatedly declared. However, the Congress aimed at: fundamental
constitutional changes, expansion of the central and the local councils, larger
proportion of elected members, enlargement of the powers and functions of the
Legislative Councils, Indianization of the higher administrative services, Indian
representation in the Executive Council and in the Indian Council in London and
substitution of irresponsible government by the responsible government run by
the representatives of the people. Apart from their demands for increased share
in the British administration, they also demanded an end to economic drain of
India by the British, removal of poverty by the rapid development of agriculture
and modern industries, reduction of military expenditure, tax, tariffs and excise
duties, permanent fixation of the rent paid by peasants to their landlords,
change of forest laws, salt tax, and abolishing duty on sugar for the benefit of
the poor, freedom of speech and press for the defence of their civil rights,
repealing the Arms Act of 1878, freedom to form associations, improvement of
education, administration of law and justice, separation of executive and
judicial functions, and removal of defects of local self-government.
The early Indian nationalist leaders had a very positive attitude
towards the British rule hoping it would modernize India. Later, they were
disillusioned by the rule as progress in the new areas was very slow and
96
overall, the country was regressing into an economic crisis. The declining
state of Indian economy led to a deeper probe into the reality of the British
rule in India and its impact on people. This economic critique became an
important identity of the moderate leaders like Dadabhai Naoroji, M.G.
Ranade, and R.C. Dutt, etc. It was in the year 1867 that for the first time
Dadabhai Naoroji in his speech addressed before the East India
Association, put forward his ‘drain theory’. He highlighted the exploitative
nature of the British rule in India and said that Britain was draining India of
all its wealth and “bleeding India white”. He calculated that out of the
revenues raised in India nearly one-fourth goes out of the country and is
added to the resources of England. He published the results of his findings
in his famous book Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, in 1901, contrasting
British liberal ideas with the actual practice of their rule in India. In 1899,
M.G. Ranade in his book Essay on Indian Economics also highlighted the
‘drain of wealth’ from India and emphasized on the need for the
development of large-scale industries for economic progress of India. In
1901, R.C. Dutt also made ‘drain theory’ the major theme of his Economic
History of India. He protested that “Taxation raised by a King is like the
moisture sucked up by the sun, to be returned to earth as fertilizing rain, but
the moisture raised from the Indian soil now descends as fertilizing rain
largely on other lands, not on India”. The economic critique theories given
by Dadabhai Naoroji, M.G. Ranade and R.C. Dutt destroyed the British
myth of benevolence. Economic demands by the Congress started with a
call for the reduction of ‘home charges’. It said that large parts of Indian
capital go into the salaries and pensions of British officers, charges needed
to maintain administration, army, war expenses, pensions to returned
officers and expenses in maintaining the colony.
They became highly critical of the exploitative economic policy of the
British and blamed it for India’s economic impoverishment and destruction of its
cottage industries. They underlined that the true essence of British imperialism
lay in the subordination of the Indian economy to the British economy. They
explained that colonialism operated through the more disguised and complex
mechanism of free trade and foreign capital investment. In Britain, protectionist
policies such as bans, and high tariffs were implemented to restrict Indian
textiles from being sold there, whereas raw cotton was imported from India
without tariffs to British factories which manufactured textiles. In reality,
British policies aimed to turn India into a supplier of raw materials and
consumer of the British manufactured goods. They demanded the
promotion of Indian industries through tariff, protection and direct economic
aid. Other resolutions called for the reduction of military expenditure,
condemned the Third Anglo-Burmese War, demanded a cut in
97
administrative expenses, and urged re-imposition of import duties on the
British manufactures.
They also enlightened the Indians about the real motives of the British
behind the development of infrastructure, building up of railway networks,
telegram and postal services, etc. They awakened the Indians that these
were not meant to benefit the Indians, in fact all this aimed to provide gains
primarily to the merchants and British officers only. The railways were
constructed to lower the transport costs and to give English merchants
easier access to the Indian raw cotton. Also, the railway would
simultaneously open the Indian markets to the British manufactured
products such as cotton textiles. These institutions and infrastructures have
drained Indian economy. British officers used them to easily mobilize troops
and communicate in times of any rebellion by the Indians and crush them.
The early nationalists saw all- encompassing poverty as man-made and
therefore, capable of being explained and removed.
Therefore, the moderate leaders who till now professed loyalty to the
British rule began sowing seeds of disaffection and discontent and even
sedition. This economic critique of the British policies in India was perhaps
the most important contribution in arousing the national consciousness
amongst the Indians. The ‘drain theory’ was easily understood even by
common peasants and thus, became the staple of nationalist political
agitations during the Gandhian era. The ‘drain theory’ thus, laid the seeds
for the modern Indian national movement to flower and mature in future.
They believed that development of India would happen only when the
political power would be in the hands of the Indians. At the end of 1905
leaders like Dadabhai Naoroji asserted Swarajya or self-government within
the British Empire on the model of self-governing colonies like Australia and
Canada, as the main political demand. Due to the firm foundation laid by
the economic critique, the later nationalist could launch powerful mass
agitations and movements.
It exposed the evil effects of the British administration and advanced
its demands through resolutions. To placate the moderates, British
parliament finally introduced an Indian Council Act in 1892. Under this Act,
the functions of the Legislative Councils were increased and gave them the
power of discussing the budget (which was barred in the Indian Councils Act
1861) or matters of public interest but had to give a notice of 6 days for it.
They could not ask supplementary questions. The principle of representation
was initiated through this Act. The district boards, universities, municipalities,
chambers of commerce and Zamindars were authorized to recommend
members to the Provincial Councils. The Legislative Councils were
empowered to make new laws and repeal old laws with the permission of
98
the Governor-General. It increased the number of additional (non-official)
members in the central and provincial legislative councils but maintained the
official majority in them. This Act laid the foundation of the parliamentary
system in India and also was the landmark in the constitutional development
of India. For the first time the election principle was accepted and introduced
by the Act of 1892. Even though the Act of 1892 was a minor reform, yet it
became a milestone in the history of the Congress. The Congress became
the symbol of new India, and as time passed it became the embodiment of
India’s hopes and aspirations, and instrument of India’s struggle for
independence.
During this phase, the Congress worked for limited objectives and
concentrated more upon building up its organization. The initial demands of
Indian National Congress may now look mild and its approach slow but to
mobilize a diversified country and building nationalism was only possible
through constitutional procedures. Indian National Congress didn’t have a
ready-made ideology to follow and they were their own teachers and
learners. Growing from the humble beginnings in 1885 to biggest mass
movements in the 20th century, Indian National Congress was successful in
wielding different regions into one nation, training people about new political
methods, developing an anti-colonial ideology, exposing the misrule of the
British, etc. It established the political truth that India must be ruled in the
interests of the Indians.

6.3. THE EXTREMIST PHASE: THE GROWTH OF MILITANT

NATIONALISM DURING 1905-1919
The partition of Bengal in 1905 by Lord Curzon, provided a spark for
the rise of extremism in the Indian National Movement. The official reason
given for the decision was that Bengal with a population of 78 million (about
a quarter of the population of British India) had become too big to be
administered. Under this pretext, British were trying to play their old-time
card of ‘Divide and Rule’. However, the growing wave of nationalism
across the globe gave birth to the Swarajist movement in Bengal to nullify the
partition of Bengal. This phase witnessed the emergence of new and younger
militant leaders like Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal and Aurobindo
Ghose within the Indian National Congress. These militant nationalists wanted
the movement to be taken outside Bengal to other parts of the country and go
beyond the boycott of foreign goods to become a full-fledged political mass
struggle with the goal of attaining Swaraj. But the Moderates, dominating the
Congress at that time, were not willing to go that far.
This led to the sharp criticism of the ideology and constitutional
methods of moderate congressmen. The achievements of the Congress
99
during this period were described by the radicals, otherwise called as
extremists as the ‘political mendicancy’ of the moderate leaders or the ‘old
guards’. They criticized the limited demands of the moderate leaders for
Swaraj within the colonial rule. Instead, they advocated the adoption of
complete Swaraj as the goal of the Congress to be achieved by more self-
reliant and independent methods. Tilak remarked “Swaraj is my birth right
and I shall have it”. Aurobindo Ghose said, “Political freedom is the life
breath of a nation”. The extremists rejected the technique of the moderates
and gave up the policy of prayer and preaching. The new leadership sought
to create a passionate love for liberty, accompanied by a spirit of sacrifice
and a readiness to suffer for the cause of the country. It wanted a faster
pace of reforms leading towards the end. As Gandhiji put it in 1909, they
were an “impatient party”. This attitude marked the beginning of the era of
extremism.
The differences between the moderates and the extremists became
official in the Surat session of the Indian National Congress in 1907. The
meeting was to take place in Nagpur that year. The extremists wanted Lala
Lajpat Rai or Bal Gangadhar Tilak to be the President. But the moderates
wanted Ras Bihari Ghosh as President. There was a rule that the session’s
President could not be from the home province. Tilak’s home province was
Bombay Presidency in which Surat was also situated. So, the moderates
changed the venue to Surat so that Tilak could be excluded from the
presidency. Ras Bihari Ghosh became the president in the session which was
held at Surat. Tilak was not even allowed to speak and this angered the
extremists, who wanted to cancel the session. Both sides were firm on their
demands, and neither was willing to find a common path. Unfortunately, the
Surat session was marred by the use of sticks and Chappals by the members of
both the wings of Congress. The moderates then held a separate meeting in
which they reiterated the Congress goal of self-government within the British
Empire and to adopt only constitutional methods to achieve their goals.
They were very vocal in their opposition to the British rule, unlike the
moderates who had faith in the British justice and fair play.
These extremist leaders though were all products of the English education
and were great admirers of their literature, political ideas, and institutions but
they drew heavily from the traditional culture and civilization of India rather than
from the west. The Lal Bal Lal (Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin
Chandra Pal leading the extremist cause in Punjab, Bombay and Bengal
respectively) were a triumvirate of assertive nationalists in the British ruled
India from 1905-1918.
Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950) after 14 years of upbringing in England
returned to India in 1893 and became the vice-principal of the state college in
100
Baroda. In 1906, in the wake of partition of Bengal, he resigned his job and
joined the Bengal National College. He was motivated by the aggressive
nationalist thoughts of Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal. The emphasis on Shakti
(force, power) in some Hindu cults also attracted him, and developed interest in
forming secret societies and preparing for acts of violence. He based his claim
for freedom for India on the inherent right to freedom, not on any charge of
misgovernment or oppression. He criticized the Congress for narrowing down its
social base to the elite section of the society and excluding the ‘proletariat’,
by which he meant the masses. This was because the early nationalists lacked
political faith in the masses; they felt that there are numerous divisions and
subdivisions in the Indian society who are generally ignorant and have
conservative ideas and thoughts. These heterogeneous elements have first to
be welded into a nation before they enter into the political sphere. But they
failed to realize that it was only during the freedom struggle and political
participation that these diverse elements were to come together. Because of the
lack of mass participation, the Moderates could not take militant political
positions against the authorities. Therefore, later nationalists differed from the
moderates precisely on this point. They requested people to come forward
and do sacrifices for the freedom of the country. He asked the people to prepare
themselves for the passive resistance. He edited the English daily Bande
Mataram and wrote fearless and pointed editorials. He openly advocated the
boycott of British goods, British courts and everything which was British.
The main cause for the rise of extremism in Indian politics can be
attributed to the deteriorating economic condition of India under the British rule.
The recurring famines of the nineteenth century coupled with plague that
broke out in Maharashtra and the inaction of the British government created
a congenial atmosphere for the growth of extremism. Along with this, week-
long celebrations were organized in Delhi Darbar held in 1903 when people
had not fully recovered from the horrific effects of the famine that killed lakhs
of people drew widespread condemnation. Events happening around the
world also inspired the extremist leaders. Abyssinia’s successful repulsion of
the Italian army in 1896 and Japan’s defeat of Russia in 1905 shattered the
notion of European invincibility. Other national movements like in Persia,
Egypt and Turkey also had a tremendous impact on the Indian youth. The
younger generation became convinced of the fact that a united fight by the
Indians will easily defeat the British imperialism.
Soon it was discovered that economic boycott might prove a powerful
weapon against economic exploitation by the British. The revolutionaries
therefore started advocating boycott of foreign goods, use of Swadeshi goods,
national education and passive resistance as the most effective weapons for
stealing British interests in India. The programme of economic boycott of British
101
and other foreign goods and the use of Swadeshi or homemade products were
designed to encourage the Indian industries. It would provide the people with
more opportunities for work and employment.
Tilak preached non-cooperation and advocated abstaining from
cooperating with the government directly or indirectly. Thus, boycott, Swadeshi,
passive resistance and national education remained as primary techniques of
the extremists to attain independence. Besides using the press for creating
awareness, the extremists made efforts to strike root in the countryside through
social work in villages, songs, Jatras (theatre), and patriotic festivals. He used
religious revivalism for mass contact. Tilak’s campaign of cow protection,
organization of the Ganpati festival in 1893 and Shivaji’s festival in 1895, aimed
at spreading the message of boycotting westernization in India. All this
projected him as a leader of Hindu orthodoxy. In 1897, Mr. Rand who was
supervising the anti-plague campaign, and other English officials were
murdered by the Chapekar brothers, who were hanged. Tilak was arrested on
the charge of inciting the violence, particularly because early in the same
month, in his newspaper Kesari, he had justified the murder of Afzal Khan
at Shivaji’s hand. Therefore, he was sentenced to 18 months jail, the first
nationalist leader to suffer imprisonment for a political cause.
We have another example of the Extremists proneness to rally support
on the basis of communal approach. Lala Lajpat Rai demanded in 1901
that Congress should openly base itself on Hindu support and not seek unity
with the Muslims when the issue surfaced on the ground that the Congress has
refused to take sides on Punjab Land Alienation Act of 1900, which was
ardently supported by the Muslim landed interests and vehemently opposed by
the Hindus. The extremist leaders and advocates of social reforms spoke of
Hindu nation only. These factors divided the Hindus and the Muslims.
Laws were passed to check their activities and influence. The following
laws were passed between 1907 and 1911: Seditious Meetings Act, 1907;
Indian Newspapers (Incitement to Offences) Act, 1908; Criminal Law
Amendment Act, 1908; and the Indian Press Act, 1910. In 1908, Kshudiram
Bose and Prafulla Chaki attempted to kill Magistrate Kingsford, a judge known
particularly for passing severe sentences against nationalists. However, the
bomb thrown at his horse carriage missed its target and instead landed in
another carriage and killed two British women, the wife and daughter of barrister
Kennedy. Aurobindo Ghosh was arrested on the charges of planning and
overseeing the attack and imprisoned in solitary confinement in Alipore Jail.
This period of imprisonment saw his transition from a political rebel to a spiritual
leader. Bipin Chandra Pal was also imprisoned for six months on the grounds of
his refusal to give evidence against Aurobindo in the Vande Mataram sedition
case. Bal Gangadhar Tilak was also sentenced to six years imprisonment at
102
Mandalay (Burma) for writing in support of revolutionaries who were involved in
the killing of two British women and calling for immediate Swaraj.
Thus, this militant nationalist movement gradually faded with the arrest
of its main leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak and retirement of Aurobindo Ghosh
and Bipin Chandra Pal (1920) from active politics. However, the extremist
leaders did land up getting some partial success like the partition of Bengal
was annulled in 1911; another constitutional reform was introduced by the
British, i.e. enactment of the Indian Council Act of 1909, which was termed
by Tilak as “a marked increase of confidence between the Rulers and the
Ruled”. After the release of Tilak from the Mandlay jail, he realized that acts of
violence actually diminished, rather than hastening, the pace of political reforms.
He was eager for reconciliation with Congress and had abandoned his demand
for direct action and settled for agitations ‘strictly by constitutional means’ – a
line that had long been advocated by his rival Gokhale. Tilak reunited with his
fellow nationalists and rejoined the Indian National Congress during the
Lucknow Pact 1916. Lastly, the aim of Swaraj, though denied by Lord Morley,
was no longer looked upon as a revolutionary demand. Now the Congress
ideology after 1918 shifted towards Gandhian philosophy. The final stage
(1919-47) of Indian nationalism was dominated by the objective of ‘Poorna
Swaraj’ or complete independence to be achieved under the leadership of
Gandhiji.

6.4. SUMMARY
Students, in this lesson we have learnt that the Congress in its first phase
came to be dominated by the Moderates also called as Early Nationalists, who
were not against the British rule in India, but they were against the ‘Un-British’
character of the British rule in India. They only aimed at getting political rights
and self-government under the British dominion. Their method has been called
3P’s – Prayers, Petition and Protest or they believed in peaceful and
constitutional methods to demand and fulfil those demands. They remained
loyalist to the British and showed great faith in the British sense of justice and
fair play. The Moderates were the first in the 19th century to develop an
economic critique of colonialism. During this phase, Congress was deeply
rooted in an understanding of the nature and character of colonial economic
domination and exploitation.
The partition of Bengal in 1905 was the catalyst that led to the rise of
Extremists in the Indian National Congress. It was only with the rise of the
radical wing or extremists that the Congress became more assertive, and
non- appeasing in its nationalist agenda. The Extremists demanded Swaraj
or complete independence from the British rule. For attaining this goal, they
103
believed in self-reliance as a weapon against the British domination.
Therefore, they promoted four principles of Swarajya, Swadeshi, boycott of
foreign goods and national education to make Indians self-reliant and mainly
to hard hit the British economically. They favoured the use of force and
revolutionary methods to achieve their aims. They inculcated pride in India’s
glorious ancient culture to generate the spirit of nationalism. This militant
nationalist movement gradually faded with the arrest of its main leader Bal
Gangadhar Tilak and with the retirement of Aurobindo Ghosh and Bipin
Chandra Pal (1920) from active politics. After his release from the Mandlay
jail, Tilak realized that acts of violence actually diminished, rather than
hastening the pace of political reforms. Therefore, under the Lucknow Pact
of 1916, Tilak rejoined the mainstream of the Indian National Congress and
abandoned his demand for direct action and settled for agitations ‘strictly by
constitutional means’ – a line that had long been advocated by his rival
Gokhale.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. Explain the ‘drain theory’.
Answer.

b. What were the ‘Home Charges’?

Answer.

c. Give any two differences between the Moderates and Extremists ideologies.
Answer.

d. What was Lucknow Pact?

Answer.

6.5. REFERENCES
Irfan Habib, A People’s History of India: The National Movement: Origins and
Early Phase, to 1918, vol. 30, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2017.
Ishita Banerjee Dube, A History of Modern India, Delhi: Cambridge University
Press, 2014.

6.6. FURTHER READINGS

104
Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885-1947, New Delhi: Macmillan, 1986.
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern
India, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2004.

6.7. MODEL QUESTIONS

1. Discuss the objectives, methods and programmes of the Indian National
Congress during 1885-1905. What was its attitude towards the British
government?
2. Discuss the role and methods adopted by the Extremists from 1905-1919.

105
LESSON 7
THE SWADESHI MOVEMENT, 1905-08; THE HOME RULE
MOVEMENT
Structure
7.0. Objectives
7.1. Introduction
7.2. The Swadeshi Movement
7.3. The Home Rule Movement
7.4. Summary
7.5. References
7.6. Further Readings
7.7. Model Questions

7.0. OBJECTIVES
Students after reading this lesson you will be able to:
● analyse the Swadeshi movement as the first mass movement.
● understand the circumstances and the importance of the Home
Rule movement.
● gain knowledge of the national movement in the early decades of
the twentieth century.

7.1. INTRODUCTION
Students in this lesson we will examine the Swadeshi movement that
started in 1905 in opposition to the partition of Bengal. This was in a sense
the first effort at a mass participation by the Indian population. The
Moderates and the Extremists both inspite of their differences initially came
together to oppose this draconian measure of the British government. The
British wanted to drive a wedge between the Hindus and the Muslims and
also wanted to isolate the educated middle classes of Bengal who were
leading the nationalist movement against them. This movement spread to
different parts of India. The Home Rule movement too will be examined in
this lesson. Two Home Rule Leagues were formed under Tilak and Annie
Besant’s leadership. Aim of this movement was to get Self-government for
the Indians under the British. This, however, was not conceded in the
Montague-Chelmsford Reforms of 1919.

7.2. THE SWADESHI MOVEMENT

The Swadeshi movement started in Bengal in reaction to the
announcement of Lord Curzon, Viceroy (1899-1905), to partition Bengal.
Lord Curzon was prejudiced against the educated middle classes of India
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and went on to say that they did not have much regard for truth. This
angered the politically conscious Indians. Further, he made changes in the
Calcutta Corporation Act, reducing the public representation in the Corporation
by half and gave representation to the European community in Calcutta.
Lord Curzon was also responsible for getting the Indian Universities Act,
passed in 1904. This Act placed all decisions on crucial matters such as
affiliation and disaffiliation of colleges in the hands of government officials and
increased the official representation in the governing bodies of the
universities. It was his way of ensuring that college authorities would discourage
any political activity and agitation among their teachers and students. The Act
resulted in open protest in the colleges, mainly of Bengal.
Next Curzon went on to carry out yet another political manoeuvre, the
Partition of Bengal. Curzon’s idea was to divide the existing province of
Bengal by creating a full-fledged province of Eastern Bengal and Assam,
with Dacca as its capital. He suggested that this division, which no Indian group
had asked for, would serve the interests of Muslims who formed a Majority of
the population in Eastern Bengal. This was said to drive a wedge between
Hindus and Muslims. Curzon also expected that the influence of nationalist in
Calcutta, by promoting Dacca as an alternative centre, would weaken. Many big
Zamindars settled in Calcutta had their estates in Eastern Bengal and they could
now be expected to shift to Dacca, thereby depriving Calcutta politicians of their
patronage and support. Curzon himself left India for Britain in 1904, but the
Partition of Bengal was announced on 19 July 1905, before his term of
viceroyalty had formally ended.
The announcement of the partition of Bengal caused anger not only in
Calcutta but in the whole of Bengal, and led to the first real large-scale
agitation launched under the nationalist. In Bengal the Partition was seen
not as a simple administrative arrangement but as an act of humiliation for
the Bengalis. It aroused revulsion and anger among the educated classes of
Bengal, including especially students and among the section of people in
towns and villages that the educated classes could influence.
Soon after the announcement of partition in July, spontaneously
organized meetings of protest were held, with students in the lead. Moderate
and extremist leaders like Surendranath Banerjee and Bepin Chandra Pal
came together, and there was agreement that the protest should have an
effective weapon. This was found in the ‘Boycott’ of British products,
especially cotton cloth and woollens, Britain’s main items of export to India,
in order to hurt Britain as well as promote Swadeshi or Indian home industry.
On 7 August 1905, the Boycott resolution was passed at a meeting in the
Town Hall of Calcutta. It was hoped that the Boycott movement would also
spread to other parts of India. On 18 October, when the Partition was to

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come legally into effect, fasting was organized throughout Bengal, a hartal
(market closure) being also observed in Calcutta. Nationalist leaders
addressed large meetings and Bankim Chandra’s Bande Mataram became
the national song of Bengal. Rabindrnath Tagore composed some of his
most stirring songs, including Amar Sonar Bangla (now the national anthem
of Bangladesh), which helped to inspire protest. wherever Bengali was
spoken or understood. ‘For the first time Indian nationalism had generated a
mass movement’.
This movement had an impact on the political atmosphere of the whole of
India, and the Moderates too had to adjust to the new situation. Gokhale in
Benares in 1905 appreciated Bengal. In December 1906 in Calcutta he held
swadeshi to be equivalent to avoidance of ‘foreign articles’ or, in effect,
boycott, in which all Indians should join.
The movement opposing the partition of Bengal slowed down in 1906.
The Nationalists were divided over how the struggle was to be continued. A
large group preferred a long –term perspective of mass awakening through
a programme of national education and cultural uplift, led by Rabindranath
Tagore, who, under the principle of atmashakti or ‘self-power’, set forth a
scheme of rural awakening and village oriented education. Others sought to
promote industry by providing technical education. One result of this was the
establishment of the Technical College at Jadavpur, Calcutta, in 1907, built
and maintained through private donations. Another feature of the movement
in Bengal was the formation of societies with their ‘volunteers’ for various
causes, directly or indirectly connected with the anti-Partition Struggle. This
reflected much unrest among the youth without there being a central
organization to coordinate activities.
In the directly politically political sphere throughout 1906 the
Moderates and the Extremists largely kept together, though tension between
them was clear. Both groups took care to keep Muslim opinion sympathetic
or at least neutral, but the Extremists’ used Hindu religion as a mobilizing
force. The ‘Shivaji Utsav’ (May 1906), which the Extremists held with much
fanfare, involving the worship of goddess Bhavani – strongly endorsed by
Tilak – seemed to show little concern for the Muslims who constituted the
majority of the Bengal-speaking population.
The differences between the Moderates and the Extremists were
temporarily covered up at the Congress session in Calcutta in December
1906, presided over by the veteran Dadabhai Naoroji. Both moderates and
extremists agreed to work on an effective common platform. They
denounced the partition of Bengal and demanded that the British government
‘reverse or modify Partition in such a manner as to keep the Bengali-
speaking community under one undivided administration’. On the issue of

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boycott of British cloth, the Congress set forth the Moderate view. The
boycott ‘was held to be legitimate’ in Bengal, but here was no call to extend it
to the whole country. A third resolution endorsed the Swadeshi Movement with
the aim of promoting Indian industry and for that purpose advocated preference
of indigenous over foreign products, even at some ‘sacrifices’. The resolution on
‘Self-Government’ set for India the goal of dominion status but the immediate
proposals were moderate: the old one of competitive examinations for civil
service being held in both India and England; adequate Indian representation in
executive Councils and the expansion of Legislative Councils ‘allowing larger
and truly effective representation of the people’; and larger powers for local
bodies. The interests of the middle-class constituency of the Congress were
reflected in every specific demand.
At his session it was also decided that provincial committees would be
formed and district conferences held. Surendranath Banerjee organized a
series of successive district conferences in Bengal in 1907. The extremists
were largely excluded from these activities.
With passing time popular mobilization became more and more difficult on
the basis of the same slogans, differences between the Moderate and Extremist
leaders again came into the open. In 1906 Bepin Chandra Pal, the Extremist
leader of Bengal started a daily, Bande Mataram, of which Aurobindo Ghose
became editor. They began to raise the movement’s level of militancy by
propagating the desirability of passive resistance (an Irish formula for peaceful
violation of laws) and an extension of the boycott of foreign cloth to a boycott
of all activities of the government. The Extremists wanted these measures to be
propagated in regions outside Bengal as well and so Pal went on a tour not
only of Bengal, but also of Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Madras, during 1907.
Another even more radical voice was the weekly Yugantar launched in April
1906. By the second half of 1908 it was selling over 15,000 copies; it regarded
even passive resistance insufficient and called for violent revolution.
Moderates rejected this open defiance of the British government. They
felt that these methods of agitation would annoy the Liberal government in
power in Britain. Thus no favours or concessions would be granted to
Indians. It was decided by the moderates to purge the Congress of the
extremists. The venue of the Congress annual session in 1907 was shifted
from Nagpur to Surat. The moderates and extremists disagreed on most
issues and no compromise could be reached. As the moderates
outnumbered the extremists delegates they prevailed and the Extremists
retreated to another venue, and the split in the Congress was complete.
The British government came down hard on the extremists. On 21
June 1908 Tilak was arrested, charged with disloyalty and enmity towards
the British Crown, and on 28 July he was sentenced to transportation for

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six years. In protest against the sentencing there was a general hartal in
Bombay for a week from 22 July (the day he was convicted), while the city’s
industrial workers went on strike for six days. The government called out the
army, and about 200 men were reputedly killed in police and army firing Tilak
was to remain in prison until 1914, at Mandalay in Burma. At Tuticorin in
Madras Presidency, a similar incident had occurred in March. When two local
Extremist leaders and sweepers and carriage-drivers went on strike; and there
were police firings on crowds at Tuticorin as well as Tinnevelly.
In Bengal nine leading nationalists had been ‘deported’ already in
December 1907. In May 1908, the police arrested Aurobindo Ghose with thirty-
eight others accused of conspiracy and armed actions. Aurobindo Ghose was
defended by the lawyer and future nationalist leader C.R. Das (1870-1925), who
won acquittal for him in May 1909. But Aurobindo’s political career had ended.
Bepin Chandra Pal was put in prison for eight months (1907-08) for refusing to
give evidence in a sedition case against Aurobindo Ghose in 1907. He left India
in August 1908 for a three year stay in England.
A peasant agitation in the canal colonies had taken place in the
Punjab in 1907. Lala Lajpat Rai who participated in this agitation had been
deported to Burma in the same year. His preference for the Moderates was
not accepted by Tilak’s supporters and Lajpat Rai decided voluntarily left,
going abroad in 1908 to return only twelve years later. Another exile was the
famous radical nationalist poet in Tamil, Subramania Bharati (1882-1921),
who too escaped to Pondicherry in 1908. Not only by trials and
imprisonments did the government try to suppress the Extremists. In June
1908 it started seizing printing presses. These powers were further
strengthened by the Vernacular Press Act passed in February 1910. The
Yugantar was among the first to be closed down by the police in 1908.
Other nationalist papers too were closed down.
Students let us look at certain drawbacks in the Swadeshi
movement. The Bengali intellectuals had failed to get the support of Marwari
traders and Saha merchants of Calcutta. It is true that there was decline in
the sale of Manchester cloth, but this was due to a dispute between Marwari
traders and British manufacturers and once the dispute was resolved the
Marwari traders started to sell the British cloth. This aroused the anger of
Swadeshi volunteers whose call for boycott of foreign cloth was ignored by
the Marwari merchants. Boycott was also not taken up with much zeal in
other parts of India. The Swadeshi movement was led by intellectuals who
came from landholding and professional classes not traders and merchants.
Therefore, their experiments with industries and labour unions resulted in
limited success.
According to the eminent historian Sumit Sarkar, the Swadeshi

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movement led to two important impressions – one is ‘a sense of richness
and promise’, an outpouring of ‘national energies bursting out in diverse
streams of political activity, intellectual debate and cultural efflorescence’. And
the second, ‘a feeling of anti-climax, at the blighting of so many hopes’. It is true
that the partition was revoked in 1911 but by then it had become a minor issue
in the face of a clear divide in the Congress leadership, a worsening of Hindu-
Muslim relations and a turn towards Muslim separatism fanned by the
British.

7.3. HOME RULE MOVEMENT

The Lucknow Pact brought the extremists and moderates together as
well as the leaders of the Muslim League. However, this did not do away
with areas of disagreement. For the Extremists led by Tilak and Annie
Besant and her followers, this was only a first step towards ‘Home Rule’.
The term ‘Home Rule’ came from the vocabulary of Irish nationalists, who
began using it from 1870 as representing a high degree of autonomy but
not necessarily full independence. In 1912 Irish Home Rule Bill was
passed by the British granting a high degree of autonomy to the Parliament
in Ireland but still much less than what the white dominions, Canada,
Australia and South Africa, possessed. Many in India thought that Home
Rule could be put forward as a practical goal of India as well. Much credit
goes to Annie Besant for adopting the slogan ‘Home Rule’ in the Indian
context. The Home Rule movement had a simple goal of promoting home
rule for India and an educative programme to arouse in the Indian people, a
sense of pride in their Motherland.
Annie Besant, an Englishwoman of Irish descent with some socialist
leaning, had later become a theosophist. Modern theosophy, as propounded
by Madame Helena Balvatsky and preached by the Theosophical Society
founded in 1875, relied considerably on notions and beliefs developed in
ancient Indian philosophy, such as transmigration of souls. It was the pursuit
of this connection with India that brought Annie Besant to this country in
1893. Initially she promoted education in Benares. From 1907 she worked
from Adyar, Madras, the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in India.
Her interest in the national cause of India seems to have been aroused after
the passage of the Irish Home Rule Bill. In October 1913 she demanded at a
public meeting in Madras that the British parliament should set up a
committee to recommend constitution reforms for India. To pursue this
cause she established a weekly, Commonweal (January 1914) and a daily
New India (June 1914) – both from Madras. In December 1914 she attended
the annual session of the Congress at Madras, by which time she had
attained considerable political prominence. She became an important

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intermediary in the complicated negotiations between the Moderates and the
Extremists, after Tilak’s release. She was partly responsible for the Lucknow
Pact of 1916.
Annie Besant realized that the Congress lacked continuously functioning
machinery, since its main activity was restricted to its annual sessions. In
September 1915 she announced her intention to form a ‘Home Rule League’ to
undertake constant political activity. The Moderates did not support her so in
September 1916 on her own initiative she had the Home Rule League
inaugurated, with plans for branches to be established in several major cities of
India. Tilak too had formed a Home Rule League in April 1916, at a
conference in Belgaum where representatives mainly from Bombay and the
Central Provinces had gathered. Tilak’s League carefully defined its aim as
‘attain(ing) Home Rule or Self – Government within the British Empire by all
constitutional means’. Tilak offered a merger of the two organizations, but
Besant preferred cooperation on the basis of a kind of understanding. It was
decided that Tilak’s Home Rule League would concentrate on Bombay
Presidency and the Central Provinces, with the rest of the country being left to
Besant’s League.
Both the Home Rule League’s for the first time in India, had mass
membership, though understandably restricted to the educated classes. At
its peak Besant’s League had some 27,000 members and Tilak’s League
some 30,000. They also issued much printed material. By September 1916
Besant’s organization had already sold 300,000 copies of twenty-six English
tracts, while Tilak’s League in its first year claimed to have issued 47,000
copies of pamphlets published in both Marathi and English. Annie Besant
and Tilak toured the country and their speeches drew large audiences. As a
result of their activities the agitation had begun to spread to villages as more
peasants attended the Congress session that year.
The popular support for the Home Rule agitation was evident when the
Madras government, in June 1917, had Annie Besant and her two principal
colleagues, G.S. Arundale and B.P. Wadia, arrested. There was a wave of
anger across the country. In protest against the action, Moderates like
Madan Mohan Malaviya, Surendranath Banerjee and M.A. Jinnah joined the
Home Rule League, and Sir Subramania Aiyar renounced his knighthood. In
July the All India Congress committee supported a proposal by Tilak to
begin passive resistance over her arrest as well as over the issue of Home
Rule. Annie Besant was freed in September and was unanimously elected to
preside over the Calcutta session of the Congress in December 1917.
The British government could no longer ignore the Lucknow Pact with
its scheme for provincial autonomy and the growing popularity of the Home
Rule movement. The Moderates lost control of the Congress and their
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support base in the middle classes too was diminishing rapidly. The British
were also concerned with loyalty of Indian soldiers fighting in France and
against Turkey in West Asia. The military situation had become critical
after some serious reverses were suffered by British troops in the First
World War. The British felt it was necessary to dangle some concessions to
keep the Moderates in the field and win over at least some of the ‘Home Rule’
supporters. On 20 July 1917, Edwin Montagu, was appointed as the Secretary
of State for India. In the very next month, on 20 August, he made a statement in
Parliament that has come to be known as the Montagu Declaration, promising a
form of responsible government to Indian. However, Montagu’s statement was
full of reservations and double-speak. A ‘progressive’ process of evolution was
simultaneously described also as ‘gradual’; and the ultimate goal was
‘responsible government’, which could always be pronounced as being different
from ‘self-government’. In any case, India would remain ‘an integral part of the
British Empire’. Reforms would occur only in successive stages in whose
determination Indians would have only to cooperate dutifully; otherwise, a stop
would be put to their progress. The declaration appeared to promise much, but
in substance gave nothing at all.
The report prepared by Montagu and Chelmsford was released in July
1918. This proposed full self-government in municipalities and district boards,
which did not find much enthusiasm among Indians. It suggested that certain
powers be transferred to the provinces, but instead of provincial autonomy, it
promised only what came to be known as ‘dyarchy’, i.e. transfer of some
departments (invariable of less importance) to elected representatives, with
major portfolios to remain vested in the hands of the Governor and his high
officials. Finally, at the centre, expanded elected representation would be
provided in a newly created Legislative Assembly, but all executive powers
and a reserve of legislative authority would remain with the Viceroy.
Both Tilak and Annie Besant were disappointed with the scheme, while
most Moderates accepted it. It was now clear that the Moderates had their
hold on the Congress. In the special session of Congress at Bombay in
August 1918, termed the proposals as ‘disappointing and unsatisfactory’. A
resolution suggested amendments that would make the proposals
acceptable. This position was confirmed at the annual session at Delhi in
December 1918, which was presided over by Madan Mohan Malaviya, a
Moderate himself. The Muslim League session, also held at Delhi in
December 1918, similarly rejected the Montagu-Chelmsford proposals. The
response of the Muslim League was due to the rising anxiety about Turkey’s
future now that World War I had ended. The Muslim League was also
angered by the arrest of Muhammad and Shaukat Ali.
The Moderates had left the congress and lost all influence over political

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developments in the country. The break with the Moderates broke the broad
united front that had been formed at Lucknow in December 1916. Even
Tilak’s and Annie Besant’s Home Rule League did not cooperate with each
other, despite Tilak's repeated offers. Tilak left for England in September
1918, to persuade English politicians (with success attained only with those
of the Labour Party) to improve upon the Montagu-Chelmsford proposals.
But even in this effort differences prevailed. While Tilak was joined by a
Congress delegation in England in May 1919, Besant brought a separate
delegation of her own. Only limited success could be attained in terms of
public support to India’s cause in England by the presence of two
delegations.
The membership of both Home Rule Leagues was from all over India,
but importantly members also came from areas like Gujarat, Sind,
United Provinces, Bihar and parts of South India which had not in the
past participated in the nationalist movement. Although the impact of the
Leagues was on a much wider community, they could not ultimately bring
mass politics to India. There were problems in certain regions like Madras,
Maharashtra and Karnataka where despite untouchable support, the
Leagues being under Brahmin domination, invited the opposition of non-
Brahmins.

7.4. SUMMARY
Students, in this lesson we have traced the Swadeshi movement as a first
mass movement of a kind. The Partition of Bengal by the British aroused
large scale anger and reaction from the educated intellectual Bengalis. A
large scale protest was launched unitedly by the moderates and the
extremists’ inspite of their differences. Boycott was the most important tool
of this movement. The Swadeshi movement was successful to a certain
extent but also had its weaknesses. The Home Rule movement as the name
suggests was an effort by Tilak and Annie Besant to get Home Rule for India
within the British dominion. However, both these leaders had their own
Home Rule Leagues and had their differences.

7.5. REFERENCES
Irfan Habib, The National Movement- Origins and Early Phase, to 1918, New
Delhi: Tulika Books, 2017.
Ishita Banerjee-Dube, A History of Modern India, New Delhi: Cambridge
University Press, 2015

7.6. FURTHER READINGS

Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885-1947, New Delhi: Macmillan, 1983
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Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition – A History of Modern
India, New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2010.

7.7. MODEL QUESTIONS

1. Trace the course of the Swadeshi Movement.
2. Critically analyse the success of the Swadeshi Movement.
3. Examine the contribution of the Home Rule League to the National
movement.
4. Critically assess the Home Rule Movement in the context of India’s
struggle for freedom.

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LESSON 8
EMERGENCE OF GANDHI AND HIS IDEOLOGY OF
MASS PARTICIPATION

Structure
8.0 Objectives
8.1 Introduction
8.2. Gandhiji’s Experiments in South Africa (1893-1914)
8.3. The Arrival of Gandhiji and his Ideology of Mass Mobilization
8.4. Champaran Satyagraha: First Civil Disobedience
8.5. Kheda Satyagraha: First Non-Cooperation
8.6. Ahmedabad Mill Strike: First Hunger Strike
8.7. Summary
8.8. References
8.9. Further Readings
8.10. Model Questions

8.0. OBJECTIVES
Students, after reading this chapter you will be able to:
● know about Gandhiji’s Experiments in South Africa (1893-1914)
● know about the emergence of Gandhiji in Indian politics.
● know in detail about his techniques of Satyagraha.
● know how by taking up the local issues he mobilized masses into the
freedom struggle of India.

8.1 INTRODUCTION
Students, Gandhiji was born on 2 October 1869 in Porbandar in the
princely state of Kathiawar in Gujarat. He was the son of a Diwan (Minister) of
an Indian state whose family, though in straitened economic circumstances,
was widely respected in his native Kathiawar. After getting his legal education in
Britain he went to South Africa in 1898 in connection with a case. The racial
discrimination experienced by Gandhiji in South Africa (where he lived for 20
years between 1893-1914) and the exploitation of the local people by the
colonial rulers made Gandhiji to think seriously of taking up the battle against
colonialism. It was in South Africa that he evolved the technique of Satyagraha
based on the principles of truth, and non-violence, which he believed could
be put into practice against the British in India. The concept of non-cooperation
and civil disobedience as an effective tool in the hands of the civilians against a
tyrannical and oppressive government found in the works of Ruskin, Tolstoy

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and Thoreau largely shaped his political ideas. It was Gandhiji, however,
who gave action to these valuable words through his Satyagraha agitations
first in South Africa and later in India, in its struggle for freedom. Gandhiji
returned to India in 1915 at the age of 46. He spent an entire year travelling
all over India, understanding Indian conditions and the Indian people and
then, in 1916, founded the Sabarmati Ashram at Ahmedabad where his
friends and followers were to learn and practice the ideas of truth and non-
violence. He also set out to experiment with his new method of struggle in
India. Gandhiji’s first great experiment in Satyagraha came in 1917 in
Champaran (his first civil disobedience movement), a district in Bihar.
Second experiment in Ahmedabad Mill Strike (his first hunger strike) and
third one at Kheda (his first non- cooperation). This lesson will explain to you
Gandhiji’s struggle in South Africa and the development of his political
ideology. Then we will discuss Gandhiji’s intervention in the movements of
peasants and workers at Champaran, Kheda and Ahmedabad. These three
movements helped Gandhiji in mobilizing Indian masses into the
mainstream of Indian politics.

8.2. GANDHIJI’S EXPERIMENTS IN SOUTH AFRICA (1893-1914)

Gandhiji landed at Durban in 1893 on a one-year contract to sort out the
legal problems of Dada Abdullah, a Gujarati merchant. At that time the
Indians in South Africa consisted of three categories- one, the indentured
Indian labour, mainly from South India. This Indian immigration to South
Africa had begun in 1890 when the White settlers recruited indentured Indian
labour, mainly from South India, to work in coffee, sugar and tea plantations.
Two the merchants- mostly Meman Muslims who had followed the labourers;
and three the ex- indentured labourers who had settled down with their
children in South Africa after the expiry of their contracts. None of these
groups of Indians had much access to education and certainly very little
education in English; even the wealthy merchants often knew only a
smattering of English necessary to carry on their trade. They accepted racial
discrimination as a part of their daily existence. Being a brown newcomer
himself, Gandhiji too suffered the brunt of that country’s aggressive colour
bigotry when he was thrown out of a first-class compartment by a White man
despite his possessing a first-class ticket. These Indian immigrants had to
suffer many other disabilities also like they were not allowed to own land
except in specially allocated locations, a kind of ghetto; they had no
franchise, all the Indian settlers were contemptuously and without distinction
were dubbed as coolies, and were not allowed to walk on the pavement or
move out of doors after 9 p.m. without a special permit. They had come to
accept all this as a way of life, and even if they resented it, they had little
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idea about how to challenge it.
Having settled the lawsuit for which he had come, Gandhiji prepared to
leave for India. But on the eve of his departure from Durban, he raised the
issue of the bill to disenfranchise Indians which was in the process of being
passed by the Natal legislature. The Indians in South Africa begged Gandhiji
to stay on for a month and organize their protest as they could not do so on
their own, not knowing even enough English to draft petitions, and so on.
Gandhiji agreed to stay on for a month and stayed for twenty years. He was
then only twenty-five; when he left, he was forty- five.
Gandhiji’s political activities from 1894 to 1906 may be classified as
the ‘Moderate’ phase of the struggle of the South African Indians. During this
phase, he concentrated on petitioning and sending formal appeals to the
authorities in South Africa and in Britain hoping that once the authorities
were informed of the plight of the Indians, they would take sincere steps to
redress their grievances as the Indians were, after all, the British subjects.
To unite different sections of the Indians and to give their demands wide
publicity, he set up the Natal Indian Congress (1894) and started a paper
Indian Opinion (1903). Gandhiji’s abilities as an organizer, as a fund-raiser,
as a journalist and as a propagandist, all came to the fore during this period.
But by 1906 Gandhiji, having fully tried the ‘Moderate’ methods of struggle,
became convinced that these would not lead anywhere.
The second phase of the struggle in South Africa, which began in
1906, was characterized by the use of the method of passive resistance or
civil disobedience, which Gandhiji named Satyagraha. Satyagraha is a
compound of the Sanskrit words Satya (meaning truth) and Agraha (polite
insistence, or holding firmly to). The ideology behind Gandhian passive
resistance was a blend of the Hindu Vaishnava tradition of Ahimsa (non-
violence), and a belief in suffering rather than fighting to overcome an
opponent. It was first used when in 1906 the Transvaal Government
Gazette published a draft of a new law which made it compulsory for
Indians to carry at all times certificates of registration with their fingerprints.
Gandhiji formed the Passive Resistance Association to conduct the
campaign. The Indians under the leadership of Gandhiji retaliated by publicly
burning their registration certificates. The passive resisters pleaded guilty,
were ordered to leave the country and, on refusing to do so, were sent to
jail. Their numbers swelled to 155. The fear of jail had disappeared, and it
was popularly called King Edward’s Hotel.
In 1910, Gandhiji set up Tolstoy Farm in Transvaal, which was made
possible through the generosity of his German architect friend, Kallenbach,
to house the families of the Satyagrahis and give them a way to sustain
themselves. The farm served as the headquarters of the campaign of
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Satyagraha against discrimination against the Indians in Transvaal or it
was here that the Satyagraha was moulded into a weapon of protest. Tolstoy
Farm was the precursor of the later Gandhian Ashrams that he set up
across India to mobilize the masses. Funds also came from India — Sir
Ratan Tata sent Rs. 25,000 and the Congress and the Muslim League, as
well as the Nizam of Hyderabad, also made their contributions.
In 1908, the government brought in another new legislation, i.e., the
Transvaal Immigration Act to restrict Indian immigration. The campaign widened
to oppose this. In August 1908, a number of prominent Indians from Natal
crossed the frontier into Transvaal to defy the new immigration laws and were
arrested. Other Indians from Transvaal opposed the laws by hawking without a
license; traders who had licenses refused to produce them. All of them were
jailed. Gandhiji himself landed in jail in October 1908 and, along with the other
Indians, was sentenced to a prison term involving hard physical labour and
miserable conditions. But imprisonment failed to crush the spirit of the
resisters, and the government resorted to deportation to India, especially of
the poorer Indians. Merchants were pressurized by threats to their economic
interests.
This was followed in 1913 by the Natal government’s decision that the
workers who had completed their terms of indenture had to pay a poll tax of
£3 a year for each member of the family, a huge amount of money for poor
labourers whose wages hardly averaged ten shillings a month, if they
wanted to remain in the country. This measure was aimed at pushing people
back into indentured labour and encouraged them to return to India. This
immediately drew the indentured and ex-indentured labourers into the
struggle, and Satyagraha assumed a truly mass character. In 1913 a
Supreme Court ruling known as the Searle Judgement, invalidated all
marriages not conducted according to Christian rites and registered by the
Registrar of Marriages. By implication, Hindu, Muslim and Parsi marriages
were declared illegal and children born out of such marriages, illegitimate.
The Indians treated this judgement as an insult to the honour of women and
many women were drawn into the movement because of this indignity.
Eventually, through a series of negotiations involving Gandhiji, Lord
Hardinge, C.F. Andrews and General Smuts, an agreement was reached by
which the government of South Africa conceded the major Indian demands
relating to the poll tax, the registration certificates and marriages solemnised
according to Indian rites and promised to treat the issue of Indian
immigration in a sympathetic manner.
Thus, Gandhiji’s ideas of mass mobilisation, peaceful protest and the
concept of Satyagraha matured during his struggle in South Africa and
gave him the required confidence to provide leadership to the Indian national

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struggle.

8.3. THE ARRIVAL OF GANDHIJI AND HIS IDEOLOGY OF MASS

MOBILIZATION
Gandhiji’s success in his movement against racial discrimination in
South Africa made him famous in India as a leader who fought for the
common people against the colonial rule. It was on G.K. Gokhale (Gandhiji’s
political Guru) repeated requests that Gandhiji returned to India from South
Africa on 9 January 1915. Since Gandhiji had been away from the country
for long, Gokhale advised him to use his first year back home to travel
across the British India to understand the land and its people, and not to
speak on political issues. Gokhale’s instructions suited Gandhiji well, as the
latter realised that there was much about the country that he had not seen,
or knew about. In South Africa, differences of religion, caste and language
were often elided over, as the community of Indians stood as one against
the imperial power. In India, however, the differences were wide and
various, and Gandhiji needed time to understand them. Drawing upon his
South African experience, he developed a firm belief in the fact that
Satyagraha in the form of non-violent protests through peaceful gatherings
and mass civil disobedience to unjust laws were the best mechanisms for
pressurizing the tyrant authorities than trying to equal them through use of
forces. His reason for resorting to non- violence was that the poor and
oppressed masses of India were not capable enough to fight the military
strength that the British authorities possessed. But this should not stop them
as they have an even powerful tool i.e., Satyagraha. Mass civil disobedience
in this way would show the light to these otherwise seemingly weak
common masses.
In 1915 Gandhiji founded the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad to train
his Satyagrahis and mobilize masses. The ideals he wished to instil in the
inmates of the Ashram were those of ‘utter simplicity of life backed by vows of
truth, non-violence and celibacy, and the practice of manual labour, hand
spinning and use of Indian products’. He also sought to impart national
education in the Ashram in the vernacular language, which put stress on
religious instruction and practical knowledge of agriculture and weaving, along
with the customary academic subjects.
Nationalist movement in India before the arrival of Gandhiji from South
Africa in 1915 has been described by Ravinder Kumar as “a movement
representing the classes” as opposed to the masses. What these
descriptions essentially imply is that nationalist politics until this time
was participated only by a limited group of Western educated professionals,
whose new skills had enabled them to take advantage of the opportunities

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offered by the Raj in the form of administrative positions, seats in the district
boards or legislative councils. They belonged mainly to certain specific castes
and communities, certain linguistic and economic groups, living primarily in the
three presidency towns of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. D.A. Low has
described these classes as “the underlings of the British rulers”, who were
marginally, if at all, interested in any far reaching economic or social change in
India. They were more concerned about creating a new elite society and culture
for themselves and were influenced by the ideas and ideals of the British
aristocracy or the middle classes.
Apart from these groups, like the Bhadralok of Bengal, the Chitpavan
Brahmins of Bombay or the Tamil Brahmans of Madras, the other sections of
the society, like the lower-caste Hindus or the Muslims, the landlords and the
peasants, both rich and landless, and commercial men of all kinds, showed
reluctance to join Congress politics. They lived in Bihar, Orissa, the Central
Provinces and Berar as well as in the United Provinces and Gujarat, which
could be described as the “backward provinces” so far as Congress politics
were concerned. The colonial government, therefore, could take comfort in the
fact that Congress was being run as a closed shop by “a microscopic
minority”.
Gandhiji as a newcomer to Indian politics in contrast with the loyal
constitutionalism of the Moderate era and the revolutionary terrorism of the
Extremist phase offered people an alternative new system of non-violent
Satyagraha based on non-cooperation and civil disobedience. He did not have a
vested interest in the political status quo and therefore more prepared to
welcome a shift of power from the Western-educated elites to the hands of the
masses. He had a clear vision of the pluralist nature of Indian society, but was
dedicated to the ideal of a united India. For the younger generation of Indians,
frustrated by the eternal squabbles between the moderates and extremists, he
offered something refreshingly new. In an age of moral vacuum and physical
despondency, he promised a political programme that was also spiritually noble.
World War I brought in social and economic dislocations for nearly all
the classes of Indian population, accomplishing the necessary social
mobilisation for an impending mass upsurge. Unlike the older politicians, he
was fully aware of Indian pluralism and took care not to alienate any of the
communities or classes. The earlier politicians wanted a hegemony of a
nationalist ideology built on ideas borrowed from the West, while
Gandhiji argued that the ideology must be rooted in India and its ancient
civilization. Popular loyalties in India, in his opinion, were not determined
by the institution of class; religion had a stronger influence on the popular
mind. He therefore successfully used religious idioms to mobilise the
masses. But this was not revivalism of the earlier politicians, as he was not

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referring to history, but to religious morality. His goal was a moral goal, and
therefore, a utopian goal-unattainable and ever-elusive. He talked about
Swaraj as his political goal, but never defined it and therefore could unite
different communities under his umbrella type leadership. "Inclusivism"
became identified as "Gandhiji's unique style of politics", which was based
on a recognition of the diversities of India.
It will be, however, misleading to suggest that Gandhiji was the first
one to involve masses into movements. The mass movement organised by
Tilak in Maharashtra in the 1890s, the activities and the Swadeshi
movement in Bengal in 1905-8 had already foreshadowed the coming of
agitational politics in India. And so far as mass mobilisation was
concerned, the Home Rule Leagues of Tilak and Annie Besant prepared
the ground for the success of Gandhiji's initial Satyagraha movements.
He also said he will not join any political organization unless it too
accepted the creed of non-violent Satyagraha. His belief after his successful
political movement in South Africa in the strength of Satyagraha encouraged
him to wait for a suitable opportunity to launch a Satyagraha in India. The
movement of peasants at Champaran in Bihar against indigo planters in
1917 provided Gandhiji that desired opportunity.

8.4. CHAMPARAN SATYAGRAHA: FIRST CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

Indigo, grown in India on a large scale since the sixteenth century,
began to be produced as a commercial crop in plantations from 1777 in the
Bengal Presidency, with the greatest concentration in the Champaran region
of current Bihar. There was great demand for Indian indigo in Britain. It was
used to dye military uniforms and also used as a dye in textiles in general.
European planters had almost total control over indigo growers; from 1837,
when they were allowed to own land, the planters became even more
exploitative. The European planters forced the peasants to grow indigo on
3/20 part of the total land (called Tinkathia system). Towards the end of the
nineteenth century, German synthetic dyes replaced indigo and the
demand of indigo declined in the world market, but still the European
planters demanded high rents and illegal dues from the peasants in order to
maximise their profits before the peasants could shift to other crops.
Besides, the peasants were forced to sell the produce at prices fixed by the
Europeans. Also, during World War I Champaran was particularly hit hard
because it produced little except food and indigo, and depended on the two
railway lines which crossed the district for the export of its surplus food to
other parts of India in return for necessities of life produced elsewhere. As a
result of the shortage of railway waggons goods imported into Champaran,
such as cloth, salt, and kerosene, soared in price, while produce normally

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exported, principally rice, was jammed up in the district and dropped sharply
in price. An official report of the period states that “Everything the cultivator
had to sell, rice, oil-seeds or Gur, had either fallen or at least not risen in
price, while everything he had to buy, cloths, salt, kerosene, had become
extremely expensive”. This meant serious shortage of money among
cultivators, causing hardship and unrest, particularly among the middle
group. But still the planters kept on exploiting the poor peasants. Therefore,
Rajkumar Shukla, a local peasant leader, travelled to the Lucknow Congress
of 1916 to invite Gandhiji personally to look into the problems of the farmers
in context of indigo planters of Champaran.
When Gandhiji reached Champaran to probe into the matter, he was
joined by Rajendra Prasad, Mazhar ul-Haq, Mahadeo Desai, Narhari
Parekh, and J.B. Kriplani. The authorities ordered him to leave the area at
once. Gandhiji defied the order and preferred to face the punishment. This
passive resistance or civil disobedience of an unjust order was a novel
method at that time. Finally, the authorities retreated and permitted Gandhiji
to make an enquiry. Now, the government appointed a committee to go into
the matter and nominated Gandhiji as a member. Gandhiji was able to
convince the authorities that the Tinkathia system should be abolished and
that the peasants should be compensated for the illegal dues extracted from
them. As a compromise with the planters, he agreed that only 25 percent of
the money taken should be compensated. The compromise reached at the
end of the Satyagraha came in the form of the Champaran Agricultural Act in
November 1918. Although neither the planters nor the tenants were happy
with this arrangement but definitely by his intervention Gandhiji succeeded in
making the struggle of Champaran peasants the first successful
experiment of Satyagraha in Indian political movement. Local peasant
leaders continued to evoke the name of Gandhiji to organize peasants,
making this area a strong base for future Gandhian movements. Within a
decade, the planters left the area. Gandhiji had won the first battle of civil
disobedience in India.
Analysing Gandhiji’s style of leadership in Champaran movement
Judith Brown has observed that “Leaving aside the recognised politicians, he
went into the villages dressed in the sort of clothes villagers wore, speaking
the vernacular, espousing causes which concerned his rustic audience:
while doing so he drew in the local business and educated men who had
had little interest or influence in the Congress style of politics. He acted as
go-between for these different groups, mediating between two tiers of public
life, and in return

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secured a powerful provincial following. He succeeded where earlier politicians
had failed or had not even attempted to mobilise support”.
In the course of the Champaran movement a group of local
intelligentsia like Rajendra Prasad, Rajkumar Shukla, J.B. Kripalani,
Brajkishore Prasad, Anugarh Narayan Sinha, Ramnavmi Prasad,
Shambhusharan Verma, Indulal Yajnik, etc. came in close contact with
Gandhiji and worked as his emissaries among masses in organising
movement. The Champaran movement marked the beginning of the mass
movement era as from now onwards masses were part of national
movement. Gandhiji through Champaran movement reposed faith in
common masses unlike Congress which did not consider masses were yet
ready for mass movement.

8.5. KHEDA SATYAGRAHA: FIRST NON-COOPERATION

As distinct from the impoverished peasant tenants of Champaran, the
district of Kheda was a land of relatively affluent Kanbi-Patidar peasant
proprietors who grew food grains, cotton and tobacco for the nearby town of
Ahmedabad. Many Patidars had gone to South Africa as traders, and
primary education was fairly widespread among them. Because of drought in
1918, the crops failed in Kheda district of Gujrat. According to the Revenue
Code, if the yield was less than one-fourth the normal produce, the farmers
were entitled to remission. The ‘lesser Patidars’, living in villages occupying
a lower position in the marriage network within the caste, were the worst
affected, for the superior Patidars could accumulate extra wealth through
dowries and often got employment also in the civil service of nearby Baroda
state and it was the former group which was to provide the most permanent
support to Gandhian nationalism. In 1917-18, a poor harvest coincided with
high prices of kerosene, ironware, cloth, and salt, while the low-caste
Baraiyas whom the Kheda Patidars employed as farm labour had
successfully forced up wages. “We have to pay six Annas for labour which
we used to get for three”, Patidar complained in April 1918. The initiative for
no-revenue (to press the case for remissions in the context of the poor
harvest) really came not from Gandhiji or Ahmedabad politicians, but from
local village leaders like Mohanlal Pandya of Kapadvanj Taluka in Kheda in
November 1917; it was taken up by Gandhiji after a lot of hesitation only on
22 March 1918. Gandhiji asked the farmers not to pay the taxes. Gandhiji,
however, was mainly the spiritual head of the struggle. It was Sardar Vallabh
Bhai Patel and a group of other devoted Gandhians, namely, Narahari
Parikh, Mohanlal Pandya and Ravi Shankar Vyas, who went round the
villages, organized the villagers and told them what to do and gave the
necessary political leadership. Patel along with his colleagues organized the
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tax revolt which the different ethnic and caste communities of Kheda
supported. But by then, a good Rabi (winter) crop had weakened the ‘case
for remissions’ and poorer peasants were coerced to pay up revenue.
Consequently, the Kheda Satyagraha, ‘the first real Gandhian peasant
Satyagraha in India’ spread only to 70 out of the 559 affected villages, and
was called off in June 1918 after only a token concession was granted. But
sustained village work would build up over the years a solid Gandhian base
in Gujarat, particularly in the Anand and Borsad Talukas of the rich tobacco
and dairy-farming Charotar tract of Kheda, and Bardoli Taluka of Surat
(where Gandhians linked up with the constructive work already started by
Kunvarji Mehta's Patidar Yuvak Mandal).
The revolt was remarkable in that discipline and unity were
maintained. Even when, on non-payment of taxes, the government seized
the farmers’ personal property, land and livelihood, a vast majority of
Kheda’s farmers did not desert Sardar Patel. Gujratis in other parts who
sympathised with the cause of the revolt helped by sheltering the relatives
and property of the protesting peasants. Those Indians who sought to buy
the confiscated lands were socially ostracised. The struggle at Kheda
brought a new awakening among the peasantry. They became aware that
they would not be free of injustice and exploitation unless and until their
country achieved complete independence.

8.6. AHMEDABAD MILL STRIKE: FIRST HUNGER STRIKE

In the middle of the Kheda Satyagraha, Gandhiji mediated in a conflict
between cotton mill owners of Ahmedabad and the workers. The conflict
emerged in February–March 1918 out of the attempt of Amabalal Sarabhai,
one of the mill owners and the President of the Ahmedabad Mill Owners
Association (founded in 1891 to develop the textile industry in Ahmedabad),
to deprive the workers of a bonus awarded in 1917, on account of the
hardship occasioned by plague. The workers, enraged at this prospective
‘pay-cut’ in the times of wartime inflation (which doubled the prices of food-
grains, cloth and other necessities) caused by Britain’s involvement in
World War I, demanded a 50 per cent hike in wages in lieu of the ‘plague
bonus’. Sarabhai was willing to concede a 20 per cent hike. The relations
between the workers and the mill owners worsened with the striking workers
being arbitrarily dismissed and the mill owners deciding to bring in weavers
from Bombay. The workers of the mill turned to Anusuya Sarabhai, a social
worker who was also the sister of Ambalal Sarabhai, for help in fighting for
justice. Anusuya Behn went to Gandhiji, who was respected by the mill
owners and workers, and asked him to intervene and help resolve the
impasse between the workers and employers. Gandhiji who knew Sarabhai

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personally and had got funds for his Sabarmati Ashram from him, took up
the workers’ cause. Anusuya too supported the workers and was one of the
chief lieutenants of Gandhiji. Gandhiji asked the workers to go on a strike and
demand a 35 per cent increase in wages instead of 50 per cent. Gandhiji
advised the workers to remain non-violent or dissuaded them from militant
picketing while on strike. When negotiations with mill owners did not progress,
he himself undertook a fast unto death (his first), as a political weapon or a
mode he would use successively on 17 occasions throughout his later career, to
strengthen the workers’ resolve or to boost the flagging spirit of the workers.
The fast had the effect of putting pressure on the mill owners who finally agreed
to submit the issue to a tribunal. The strike was withdrawn. In the end, the
tribunal awarded the workers a 35 per cent wage hike.
The Textile Labour Association set up in 1920 under Gandhiji’s initiative,
consolidated his hold on the Ahmedabad textile workers. The Labour
Association was founded on a philosophy of interdependence of capital and
labour where the owners were seen as ‘trustees’ for the workers.
Unsurprisingly, the Association believed in the peaceful arbitration of disputes
instead of radical measures. Gandhiji’s influence among the workers, however,
did not go much beyond Ahmedabad and he remained ‘firmly aloof’ from the All
India Trade Union Committee even before the Communists became important
within it. His impact was far greater among the peasants since, as Sarkar
puts it, exploitation in the countryside put on a ‘paternalistic colour’ at times, and
issues like land revenue or salt tax provided unifying grievances.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. What was the Tinkathia system?
Answer.

b. Who was Anusuya Sarabhai?

Answer.

c. Why did Kheda Satyagraha take place?

Answer.

d. Explain the term Satyagraha.

Answer.

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8.7. SUMMARY
Students, in this we learnt about the emergence of Gandhiji as an Indian
political leader. Unlike other Indian nationalist leaders Gandhiji did not grow
to maturity through experience of public life in his own country, but laid the
spiritual and political foundations of his leadership in a foreign land. South
Africa became Gandhiji’s training ground for leadership. His experiment with
non-violence and Satyagraha as political weapon in the course of his
movement against racial discrimination in South Africa was unheard of in
political protest. After coming back to India in 1915, Gandhiji experimented
with his tool of Satyagraha to combat the might of British imperialism in
India. He launched three Satyagrahas between 1917 and 1918— two of
them were in rural areas and one in the town of Ahmedabad. The
Satyagraha in Champaran, Bihar, was in support of indigo producers; the
one in Kheda, Gujarat, supported the no tax campaign; the urban one
championed the cause of mill-hands in Ahmedabad. Such disputes were
considered outside the normal range of political activities but Gandhiji chose
to represent local issues and gave new meaning to nationalist politics
through mass mobilization. His engagement with grass-roots politics gave
him access to different nationalist groups all over India—peasants, factory
workers, industrialists, moderates, extremists. He understood people and
situations, and this became the hallmark of his leadership. He first
ventured out to the masses and adopted techniques that varied from time to
time and from situation to situation. By doing so he made his debut as an
influential actor on the Indian political stage. These Satyagrahas also
attracted many political workers like Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, Rajendra
Prasad, J.B. Kripalani, Narhari Parikh etc. who proved valuable in the future
national struggles. Also, through these Satyagrahas Gandhiji established his
feet among the Indian masses and came to have a surer understanding of
the strengths and weaknesses of the Indian masses. These three
Satyagrahas raised a lot of hopes in Gandhiji’s leadership and prepared him
to suggest and stage an all-India movement in 1919. He played a pivotal
role in making the Indian National Congress a people’s Congress and the
national movement a mass movement.

8.8. REFERENCES
Judith M. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power: Indian Politics 1915 – 1922,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.
Bipin Chandra, India’s Struggle for Independence: 1857-1947, New Delhi:
Penguin Books, 1988.
Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885-1947, New Delhi: Macmillan, 1983.

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8.9. FURTHER READINGS
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India,
New Delhi: Orient Black Swan, 2004.
Ishita Banerjee Dube, A History of Modern India, Delhi: Cambridge University
Press, 2014.

8.10. MODEL QUESTIONS

1. Discuss the rise of Gandhiji in the Indian freedom struggle.
2. What was the significance of the South African experience in formulation of
Gandhiji’s political philosophy?
3. Discuss the significance of Gandhian movements before the Non-
Cooperation Movement.
4. In what way did Mahatma Gandhiji transform the nature of Indian freedom
struggle? Discuss.

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LESSON 9
CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF KHILAFAT AND NON-
COOPERATION MOVEMENT
Structure
9.0. Objectives
9.1. Introduction
9.2. Non-Cooperation Movement: Causes
9.3 Khilafat Issue: Towards the Non-Cooperation
9.4. Launch of the Non-Cooperation Movement and its Programmes and Spread
9.5. Regional Variations
9.6. Withdrawal of the Movement and its Critical Assessment
9.7. Summary
9.8. References
9.9. Further Readings
9.10. Model Questions

9.0. OBJECTIVES
Students, after reading this chapter you will:
 learn about the pivotal role played by Gandhiji in the freedom struggle of
India.
 learn about the circumstances which supported Gandhiji in building
Indian freedom struggle.
 learn in detail about the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation Movement.

9.1. INTRODUCTION
Students, after reading this lesson you will be able to understand the
significant role played by Gandhiji in unifying the national freedom struggle
against the foreign rule by organizing the first mass movement in India, i.e. the
Khilafat and the Non-Cooperation Movement. This lesson will make you
understand the contribution of Gandhiji’s first mass movement in leading India
to the path of independence. The lesson will also familiarize you with the
reasons, course of action, the methods adopted in the movement and the role
and response of the Indian people towards the movement. Lesson also
analyses the regional variations and impact of this movement.

9.2. NON-COOPERATION MOVEMENT: CAUSES

The emergence of Gandhiji played a pivotal role in the history of Indian
nationalism. The twenty years that Gandhiji spent in South Africa (1893-
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1914) had a decisive influence in his later life. It was in South Africa that he
evolved the technique of Satyagraha based on the principles of truth and
non-violence, which he believed could be put into practice against the British
in India. The concept of non-cooperation found in the works of Ruskin,
Tolstoy and Thoreau influenced him significantly. These three illustrious
writers advocated non- cooperation as an effective tool in the hands of the
civilians against a tyrannical and oppressive government. It was Gandhiji,
however, who gave action to these valuable words through his
Satyagrahaagitations first in South Africa and later in India, in its struggle
for freedom.
Gandhiji returned to India in 1915 at the age of 46. He spent an entire year
travelling all over India, understanding Indian conditions and the Indian people
and then, in 1916, founded the Sabarmati Ashram at Ahmedabad where his
friends and followers were to learn and practice the ideas of truth and non-
violence. He also set out to experiment with his new method of struggle in India.
Gandhiji’s first great experiment in Satyagrahacame in 1917 in Champaran (his
first civil disobedience movement), a district in Bihar. Second experiment in
Ahmedabad Mill Strike (his first hunger strike) and third one at Kheda (his first
non-cooperation). It was this reservoir of goodwill, and successful experience of
Champaran, Ahmedabad and Kheda, that encouraged Gandhiji, in February
1919, to call for a nation-wide protest against the unpopular legislation that the
British were threatening to introduce as by this time Gandhiji had lost all his
faith in the constitutional methods and turned from cooperator of British rule to
non-cooperator. In response, Gandhiji decided to formally launch the Non-
Cooperation Movement on 1 August 1920, the day on which Lokmanya Tilak
breathed his last. In his Young India, under the title Swaraj In One Year,
Gandhiji, suggested to wage a struggle against the mighty British Empire
based on discipline, non-cooperation and self-sacrifice.
The background to the movement was provided by multifarious reasons
discussed as below:
1. The Lucknow Pact of 1916 not only united the two wings of the Congress,
i.e. the Moderates and the Extremists but also led Congress and the
All India Muslim League to dissolve their differences. They both
agreed to put up common political demands before the government.
This Hindu- Muslim cooperation made the situation ripe for struggle
against the mightiest British rule in India.
2. Economic situation in the country worsened in the aftermath of the
First World War. There was first a rise in prices and then a depression
in economic activity. Indian industries, which had prospered during the
War because of increased foreign imports of manufactured goods had
ceased, faced losses and closure after the end of the First World War.
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Moreover, foreign capital now began to be invested in India on a large
scale. The Indian industrialists wanted protection of their industries
through imposition of high custom duties and grant of government aid.
They realized that a strong nationalist movement and an independent
Indian government alone could secure these. The workers, urban
educated Indians and artisans, facing unemployment and high prices,
also turned actively towards the nationalist movement. The peasantry,
groaning under deepening poverty and high taxation, was also waiting
for a lead. Thus, all the sections of Indian society were suffering from
economic hardships, compounded by droughts, high prices and
epidemics.
3. The international situation was also favourable to the resurgence of
nationalism. The First World War gave a tremendous impetus to
nationalism all over Asia and Africa. In order to win popular support for
their war effort, the Allied nations: Britain, United States, France, Italy and
Japan, promised a new era of democracy and national self- determination
to all the peoples of the world. The nationalists in India were expecting
that India would be given Swarajand othermajor political gains after the
end of the war. But after their victory, all the wartime promises were
forgotten and, in fact, betrayed.
4. The British government had no intention of conceding to the demands
of the Indian people and made only a half-hearted attempt at
constitutional reforms. Changes were introduced in the administrative
system as a result of the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, also
known as the Government of India Act 1919, which further
disillusioned the nationalist. The Act of 1919 had three major defects
from the nationalist point of view: (a) absence of responsible
government at the centre or the reform proposals failed to satisfy the
rising demand of the Indians for self-government, (b) separate
electorates for different communities, (c) introduction of dyarchy in the
province was too complicated to be worked out smoothly. Under
dyarchy, the provincial list was divided into ‘reserved’ and ‘transferred’
subjects. The interaction between Reserved and Transferred subjects
was difficult and in practice a distinction between the two sections was
faulty. For example, agriculture was a Transferred subject while
irrigation was a Reserved subject. Therefore, the majority of the
nationalist leaders condemned it as ‘disappointing and unsatisfactory’.
5. The next important landmark of this period was the enactment of the
Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919, which was popularly
called the Rowlatt Act by the government. Despite opposition from every
single Indian member of the Central Legislative Council, it was passed
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on
18 March 1919. It was termed as the ‘Black Act’ in Indian history.
Rowlatt Act authorized the government to imprison any person
suspected of terrorism for a maximum period of two years, without trial
(Na Appeal, Na Vakil, Na Dalil). It aimed at severely curtailing the civil
liberties of the Indians in the name of curbing terrorist violence. This
Act was treated by the whole of political India as a grievous insult,
especially as it came at the end of the war when substantial
constitutional concessions were expected.
6. The same period witnessed the naked brutality of the British
imperialists at Jallianwala Bagh, in Amritsar. An unarmed but large
crowd had gathered on 13April 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh to protest
against the arrest of their popular leaders Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew and
Dr. Satyapal. General Dyer, the military commander of Amritsar,
entered the garden with his troops, blocked the main entrance, and
ordered his troops to open fire without warning on the unarmed crowd
including women and children. They were fired upon mercilessly with
rifles and machine guns for some 10 minutes, discharging 1,650
bullets at the peaceful protestors. They stopped only when the
ammunition supply almost got exhausted. Thousands were killed and
wounded. This shocked the whole world. Gandhiji gave up the Kaiser-
i-Hind title bestowed upon him by the British government in protest.
The famous poet Rabindranath Tagore also renounced his
Knighthood in protest. After this massacre, martial law was
proclaimed throughout Punjab and the people were submitted to the
most uncivilized atrocities. The massacre became the most infamous
event of the British rule in India. For Gandhiji this Jallianwala Bagh
incident though atrocious was the cleanest demonstration of the
government intentions and it gave all the needed shock.
7. Some developments further fuelled the frustrations of the Indians like the
Hunter Committee appointed by the government to inquire into the Punjab
disturbances was an eye wash. The report and the government refused to
punish any official for the murderous repression that had been unleashed
in April 1919 and also the House of Lords had voted in favour of General
Dyer’s action. British public also demonstrated its support by helping the
Morning Post, a conservative British newspaper, collect 50,000 pounds for
General Dyer. All these developments prepared the ground for a popular
upsurge against the British government.
8. The Indian Muslims were also incensed when they discovered that
their loyalty had been purchased during the war by assurances of
generous treatment to Turkey after the war-a promise British
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statesman had no intention of fulfilling. The Muslims regarded
Calipha as their spiritual and temporal head and were naturally upset
when they found that he would retain no control over the holy places
which was his duty as a Calipha to protect.

Therefore, the cruelties practiced and defended by the government

from the Rowlatt Acts to the Khilafat question had made Gandhiji change his
political point of view from being 29 years loyalist to an anti-imperialist. This
transformation made him revise his understanding of the British rule in India,
which had made India more helpless than ever before. Gandhiji now felt the
need to launch a more broad-based movement in India. As the Rowlatt
Satyagraha, despite being a widespread movement, remained limited mostly
to the cities and few towns. Therefore, he was certain that no such
movement could be organized without bringing the Hindus and Muslims
closer together. One way of doing this, he felt, was to take up the Khilafat
issue. Therefore, more ingeniously, Gandhiji changed the goal post by
tethering the Indian freedom movement to the pan-Islamic movement that
demanded restoration of Calipha on the throne of Turkey. The result was an
unprecedented mobilization cutting across religious lines. By conflating the
Indian cause with the cause of Islam, Gandhiji had radically changed the
tenor of the freedom movement and became its unquestioned leader.

9.3. KHILAFAT ISSUE: TOWARDS THE NON-COOPERATION

Students let us discuss the Khilafat Issue in detail. Until 1914 the
Ottoman Empire (1299-1922) in Turkey was the only Islamic Empire. This
Islamic-run Ottoman Empire controlled a large part of west Asia, including the
territories of the present-day regions of Turkey, Hungary, Syria, Lebanon,
Greece, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Iran and Hejaz (western Saudi Arabia).
These territories contained the holiest sites of Islam, viz. Mecca, Medina,
Najaf and Jerusalem. It was the symbol of Islam’s worldly power. The
Muslims in India, as the Muslims all over the world, regarded the Sultan of
Turkey as their spiritual leader, Calipha. The Calipha in Islamic tradition
was considered as the successor to the Prophet Muhammad, the
commander of the believers and the custodian and protector of the Muslim
holy places. He stood for the unity of the Islamic people. During the First
World War, Turkey had allied with Germany and Austria against Britain,
France, Russia and Italy (Entente powers). Therefore, younger generation of
Muslims and a section of traditional Muslim scholars were becoming
increasingly critical of the British rule in India.
Meanwhile, in the early twentieth century, ground for the Hindu-
Muslim cooperation in national struggle had been prepared by the Lucknow
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Pact of 1916, which was further strengthened by the emergence of a new
group of younger Muslim intellectuals like Mohammad Ali, Abdul Kalam
Azad, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Hasan Imam, which moved away from the
loyalist politics of Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan and the elitism of the older Aligarh
generation and looked for the support of the entire community behind them.
These younger Muslim intellectuals who attended the inaugural meeting of
the Muslim League suggested a different role for the League. Mohammad Ali
felt that the Muslim League should promote the integration of India, not its
fragmentation, stating that “The Congress and the League were like two
trees growing on either side of the road, their trunks stood apart, but their
roots were fixed in the same soil”. Even Aga Khan, one of the founders and
the first elected permanent President of the All-India Muslim League, who
also pledged loyalty to the British Empire, found the new voices of these
radical leaders too extreme and resigned in 1913. Mohammad Ali persuaded
Muhammad Ali Jinnah to join the Muslim League at its session in 1913 by
convincing him that it would not conflict with his loyalty to the Congress
party. Jinnah acted as a bridge between the League and the Congress. So,
these young Muslim leaders changed the anti-Congress and pro-
government attitude of the Muslim League.
The First World War had ended with the defeat of the Ottoman Turkey.
And there were rumours that a harsh peace treaty was going to be imposed
on the Ottoman Emperor, the spiritual and temporal head of the Islamic
world (the Calipha). To defend the Calipha’s temporal powers, soon a
Khilafat Committee was formed in Bombay in March 1919 under the
leadership of the Ali Brothers (Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali), Abdul
Kalam Azad, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Hasrat Mohani. Its main objective was
to retain Calipha’s control over the Muslims sacred places and in territorial
adjustments after the war, the Calipha should be left with sufficient
territories. This young brigade of the Muslim leaders then began discussing
with Gandhiji about the possibility of a united mass action on the issue. After
the withdrawal of the Rowlatt Satyagraha, Gandhiji also thought it prudent to
involve himself in the Khilafat movement. Gandhiji looked upon the Khilafat
agitation as “an opportunity of uniting the Hindus and the Mohammedans
as would not arise in a hundred years”. Thus, the ground for a country-wide
agitation was prepared. For some time, the Khilafat leaders limited their actions
to meetings, petitions, deputations in favour of the Khilafat.
In the meantime, the conference of Muslims leaders held at Lucknow on
21 September 1919, called upon the people to observe 17 October as the
Khilafat Day, a day of fasting and prayer. Gandhiji advised Hindus to join with
Muslims in observing it so as to give proof of their solidarity with them as ‘the
surest and simplest method of bringing about the Hindu-Muslim unity’. The Day
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was widely observed and may be said to mark the beginning of the Khilafat
movement and of the short-lived period of political collaboration between
Hindus and Muslims.
After this, an All India Khilafat Conference was held at Delhi on 23-24
November 1919 in which both Gandhiji and Madan Mohan Malviya
participated. Gandhiji had conducted himself so masterfully and with such
manifest sincerity over the Khilafat question that as soon as the agitation
began to take organized form he emerged as its leader. From the Muslim
point of view, it was advantageous to have a Hindu leader, especially one of
Gandhiji’s stature who was so firmly committed to Hindu-Muslim unity that
he adopted the Muslim grievance over Turkey and the Califate as his own
and who at the same time could ensure the support of the Hindu community
for the cause. The esteem in which the Muslim leaders held Gandhiji can be
seen from the fact he was made President of the first All-India Khilafat
Conference held in Delhi on 23-24 November 1919.
Immediately after the Khilafat Conference, Muslim theologians or the
Ulemas, the body of the Muslim divines, whose collective power and influence
had been shattered after the Great Revolt of 1857, were also sought to be
brought into the movement by the establishment of the Jamiat-ul-Ulama-i-
Hind(Association of Indian Religious Scholars) at Delhi on 25 November 1919,
under the leadership of Maulana Mahmud-ul Hasan of the Deoband School.
The organization was also supported by the Ulema of the Firangi Mahal of
Lucknow, then under the leadership of Maulvi Abdul Bari. These Muslim divines
were generally far more aggressive in their opposition to the foreign government
than the middle-class leaders of the Muslim League and in religious matters
they naturally exercised enormous influence on the Muslim public. Their
influence on Muslim politics at this time was precisely important because of the
union of religion and politics that the Khilafat movement had affected. The third
most important organization in the Khilafat movement was the Central
Khilafat Committee organized at the Third Khilafat Conference held at
Bombay on 15-17 February 1920. Its main objective was to secure for
Turkey a just and honourable place and to obtain the settlement of the
Khilafat question. The Khilafat issue brought together the younger
generation of radical Muslim leaders and the section of traditional Muslim
scholars who were becoming increasingly critical of the British rule. The
Jamiat-al-Ulama joined the Congress, the Muslim League and the Khilafat
Committee in holding simultaneous sessions at Amritsar in December
1919, when all these organizations passed resolutions in support of the
Khilafat and the freedom of Turkey. This was an event of great significance
for Indian politics.
As the year 1920 rolled on, the Allied assault upon Turkey reached its
135
final stage, following the British occupation of Constantinople (Istanbul), the
capital of the Caliphate, thereby obtaining control over the person and court
of the Calipha. Peace terms offered to Turkey were announced on 15 May
1920. Britain and France published the terms of the Treaty of Sevres, which
the docile Ottoman government at Constantinople signed on 10 August
1920. By this treaty, the Ottoman territories in west Asia were mainly divided
between Britain and France. Britain seized Iraq, Transjordan (now
Jordan) and Palestine, while Hejaz (the area of Mecca and Medina) was
given to the Sharif of Mecca, a docile British puppet. Turkey was asked to
recognize the Hejaz as a free and independent state and to renounce it’s all
rights and titles over Egypt, Sudan, and Cyprus. There were other terms
which greatly reduced Turkey’s military strength. France obtained Syria and
Lebanon. What now constitutes Turkey was also carved up. Greece was
given eastern Thrace and a large area around Izmir; Armenia received much
of north-eastern Turkey; while the French occupied Cilicia, a large region in
southern Turkey. Turkey also lost all control over the Dardanelles, a narrow
sea passage between Istanbul and Asian Turkey. This harsh treatment
meted out to Turkey created increasing alarm in India, especially among the
Muslims who felt that now not only Islam’s holiest places, but also the
Calipha himself, has fallen into the Christian hands. The depth of religious
feeling surrounding the Khilafat question was illustrated by the development
of the Hijratmovement. Rural populations mainly in Pashtun territory in the
North West Frontier Province had heard in their mosques from their religious
leaders that Islam was in danger in British India and began in the summer
of 1920 a migration or Hijratto Afghanistan, which was considered to be a
friendly Muslim country. More than 30,000 Muslims made the journey to
Afghanistan until the Government of Afghanistan advised against it. Thus,
causing much suffering and distress to the migrants, and most of them had
to return their homes including Abdul Ghaffar Khan.
A Khilafat delegation from India to England and Europe (February-
September 1920) found it hard to get even a simple hearing in high quarters. A
militant trend emerged amongst the Muslims, demanding an active agitation
such as stopping all cooperation with the British. At the Khilafat Conference in
Allahabad early in June 1920 with Gandhiji as the decisive figure, it was decided
that non-cooperation over the issue of the Khilafat should begin on 1 August
1920 but left it on Gandhiji to set it out. It must be borne in mind that by
this time, the Hunter Committee’s report had been published in Punjab in 1919
whitewashing the terror unleashed in Punjab in 1919, and in July General Dyer,
responsible for mass murder, was widely acclaimed in England, within
Parliament as well as outside. The programmes of non-cooperation by including
the ratification of ‘Punjab wrongs’ as an additional objective naturally made the
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appeal of the struggle much wider.

9.4. LAUNCH OF THE NON-COOPERATION MOVEMENT AND

ITS PROGRAMMES AND SPREAD
The resolution of the Non-Cooperation was passed by the Congress in the
special session held in Calcutta in September 1920 under the presidency of
Lala Lajpat Rai. The Congress as well as the Khilafat Committee had agreed
upon the triple purpose of non-cooperation: to redress the grievances of Punjab,
rectification of the Khilafat wrongs and the establishment of Swaraj. The
adoption of the Non-Cooperation Movement (initiated earlier by the Khilafat
conference) by the Congress gave it a new energy. Through the summer of
1920 Gandhiji along with Ali Brothers undertook a nation-wide tour during which
he addressed hundreds of meetings, mobilizing popular support for the
movement.
Gandhiji proposed that the movement should unfold itself in a four-
stage plan of non-cooperation. It should begin with the surrender of titles that
the government awarded; boycott of government civil services, courts
and legislative councils, schools, and foreign goods; and resignation from
army and police. Then, in case the government used repression, a full civil
disobedience campaign (refusal to pay taxes) would be launched. Through
these negative programmes, Gandhiji sought to refuse to cooperate with
the British government.
The positive programmes of the Non-Cooperation Movement included:
establishment of national schools and colleges, setting up of Panchayats,
popularization of Swadeshi, Charkha and Khadi, development of Hindu-
Muslim unity, removal of untouchability, etc.
The Calcutta decision was endorsed at the Nagpur Session of the
Congress (December 1920). In this session, Congress proclaimed for the first
time, that its object is “The attainment of Swaraj by all legitimate and peaceful
means”. In this Nagpur session changes were made in the constitution of the
Congress for the better organization of the party. At the organizational level, the
Congress was now to have a Working Committee of fifteen members to look
after its day to day affairs. Provincial Committees were established based on
regional languages criterion so that they could keep in touch with the people
by the formation of village and Mohalla committees. Congress membership was
thrown open to all adult men and women on the payment of an annual fee,
which was reduced to 4 Annas per year to enable the poor to become its
members. This facilitated the Congress to widen its social base and financial
assets. Thus, the organizational structure was both streamlined and
democratized. Congress volunteer corps emerged as the parallel police. In the
Nagpur session it was also decided to organize the collections for a Tilak
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Memorial Swaraj Fund to be used for carrying out constructive activities. By 30
June 1921, as much as Rs. 1.05 crores had been collected for the fund- a
remarkable achievement and shows the enthusiasm towards the movement
by the people.
About 90,000 students left the government schools and colleges and
joined around 800 national schools and colleges, which cropped up during
this time. These educational institutions were organized under the
leadership of Acharya Narendra Dev, Lala Lajpat Rai, C.R. Das, Zakir
Hussain, Subhash Chandra Bose (who became the principal of National
College at Calcutta) and included Jamia Millia University at Aligarh, Kashi
Vidyapeeth, Gujrat Vidyapeeth, and Bihar Vidyapeeth.

Around 1,500 lawyers also gave up their practice, some of whom were
Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Asaf Ali, T. Prakasham, Saifuddin
Kitchlew, Vallabhai Patel, Asaf Ali, and Rajendra Prasad.
While the struggle began, the government organized Council elections
under the Act of 1919, in November 1920. The council elections reflected the
strength of the boycott in most provinces of the country. In cities, only 8 percent
of the registered voters voted in Bombay and as few as 5 percent in Lahore.
Though there was a low turnout at the council election almost everywhere but
Madras remained an exception, where the Justice Party, the party of the non-
Brahmins, felt that entering the council was one way of gaining some
power– something that usually only Brahmans had access to.
During the ‘Satyagraha Week’ (6-13 April 1921) Gandhiji in order to
expand the movement beyond the middle-class constituencies, launched a
fresh Swadeshi campaign with twin aims of boycotting the foreign cloth and
the promotion of Charkha (spinning wheel) in every home. He also
again emphasized on temperance and abandonment of untouchability, a
necessary step for entry of the lower castes and outcastes into the
movement.
The effects of non-cooperation on the economic front were more dramatic
and successful. Foreign goods were boycotted, liquor shops picketed, and
foreign cloth was burnt in huge bonfires. The value of imports of foreign
cloth fell from Rs. 102 crores in 1920-21 to 57 crores in 1921-22. The import of
the British cotton piece goods also declined from 1,292 million to 955 million
yards during the same period. Partly responsible for this success was trader
participation, as the businessmen pledged not to indent foreign cloth for specific
periods. As the boycott movement spread, and people began discarding
imported clothes and wearing only Indian ones, production of Indian textile mills
and handlooms went up. During the period 1918-22, while the large

138
industrialists did not support non-cooperation programmes and remained pro-
government, the Marwari and Gujarati merchants, aggrieved by the falling
exchange rates and the taxation policy of the government, remained ‘fairly
consistently pro-nationalist’. However, their refusal to import foreign cloth might
have also been due to a sudden fall in rupee-sterling exchange rates that made
import extremely unprofitable. Production of handloom, on the other hand, also
increased, but no definite statistics are available for that.
Together with non-cooperation there were also other associated
Gandhian social movements, which also achieved some success.
Temperance or anti-liquor campaign resulted in significant drop in liquor
excise revenue in Punjab, Madras, Bihar, and Orissa. Hindu-Muslim
alliance remained unshaken throughout the period, except in the Malabar
region. The anti- untouchability campaign, however, remained a secondary
concern for the Congressmen, though for the first time Gandhiji had brought
this issue to the forefront of nationalist politics by inserting in the historic
1920 resolution an appeal “to rid Hinduism of the reproach of untouchability”.
The emphasis of the movement was always on the unifying issues and on
trying to cut across or reconcile class and communal disjunctions.
Women also came to the forefront and played a significant role.
They freely offered their jewellery for the support of the movement with great
zeal. Women volunteers were enlisted. In Bengal, Basanti Devi and Urmila
Devi, wife and sister respectively of C.R. Das, Nellie Sengupta, wife of
J.M. Sengupta, along with others like Mohini Devi, Labanya Prabha
Chanda played a prominent role in this movement. Picketing of foreign wine
and cloth shops and selling of Khaddar on the streets happened to be the
main areas of their activities.

It should also be noted that this movement in the cities gradually

slowed down for a variety of reasons. Khadicloth was often more expensive
than mass- produced mill cloth and poor people could not afford to buy it.
How then could they boycott mill cloth for too long? Similarly, the boycott of
British institutions posed a problem. For the movement to be successful,
alternative Indian institutions had to be set up so that they could be used in
place of the British ones. These were slow to come up. So, students and
teachers began going back to government schools and lawyers joined back
work in government courts.
In July 1921, Mohammad Ali along with other leaders was arrested by the
British government for holding the view that “It was religiously unlawful for the
Muslims to continue in the British army, which will be sent to the battlefields of
Turkey on Britain’s behalf”. Gandhiji as well as the Congress supported
Mohammad Ali and issued a manifesto on 4 October appealing not only to the
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civilians, but also to the soldiers to abandon their government services.
Therefore, it posed a new challenge to the British government in India as it
was just not possible now to raise troops for any campaign in Turkey. In
retaliation, the government came down heavily on the protestors. Volunteer
corps were declared illegal, public meetings were banned; the press was
gagged.
The next dramatic event was the visit of the Prince of Wales on 17
November 1921. The day the Prince landed in Bombay was observed as a day
of Hartal all over India. He was greeted with empty streets and downed shutters
wherever he went. Emboldened by their successful defiance of the government,
non-cooperators became more and more aggressive.
Under the growing pressure from the Congress, on 1 February 1922,
Gandhiji served an ultimatum to Lord Reading, the Governor-General and
Viceroy of India to withdraw within one week all repressive laws failing which
he would launch another ‘Satyagraha’ or the civil disobedience movement
from Bardoli (Gujrat) if (i) the political prisoners were not released, and (ii) press
controls were not removed.

9.5. REGIONAL VARIATIONS

The one of the most significant features of the Non-Cooperation
Movement was its uneven distribution in the country and wide regional
variations. It was for the first time that the movement was not limited to a
certain area or to a group of people but penetrated deep into the localities and
different sections of the people irrespective of their caste, creed or religion. It
drew into its fold the struggles of peasants and tribals which were developing in
different parts of India. Depending on the Congress organizational strength in
particular regions, the intensity of the movement varied accordingly. Different
regions have been analysed as under:
Punjab: In Punjab, Non-Cooperation began with a fairly successful boycott of
their schools and colleges by students in Lahore inspired by Lajpat Rai in
January 1921. But the movement in the cities remained relatively weak
precisely because haunting memories of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre were
still very fresh. However, the countryside was stirred into action because of the
Akali upsurge. The Akalis were largely drawn into the movement because they
wanted to set their Sikh shrines free from the clutches of the corrupt and
immoral Mahants(priests), who were appointed and protected by the British
administration after the annexation of Punjab in 1849. They demanded the
administration of the Golden Temple to be transferred from the government
to an elected representative body of Sikhs answerable to the Panth. To achieve
their goal, Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (S.G.P.C.) was formed
in 1920 which firmly adhered to non-violent methods of the Non-Cooperation in
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achieving its goal. Gandhiji and the Congress also supported the campaign.
Finally, the British government handed over the keys of the Golden temple to the
Sikhs. But when their demands were subsequently met by the government,
Akalis did not allow their religious struggle to be completely appropriated by the
Congress agitation.
Bombay: The relatively weak nature of the Non-Cooperation in Bombay has
been attributed to the instinctive opposition from the followers of Tilak to
Gandhian leadership. The Tilakites were unenthusiastic about Gandhiji, and
among the Tilakites a radical student group under S.A. Dange became active
which eventually began to propound the ideals of Marxism. S.A. Dange
attempted a comparison between Gandhiji and Lenin underlining the
limitation of Gandhiji in starting a social revolution. Dange's argument was that
the Gandhian ideology fell short of the vision of an egalitarian society that Lenin
had been able to achieve by redistributing wealth equally among different
classes. Congress was conceived as a Chitapawan Brahman led organization;
therefore, it did not receive the support from the non-Brahmins. Higher castes
also largely remained away from the Non-Cooperation because they disliked
Gandhiji’s emphasis on the upliftment of the depressed classes and their
participation in the Non-Cooperation. However, there were some scattered and
periodical local outbursts. Like Bombay witnessed riots on the visit of the Prince
of Wales between 17-20 November 1921, which was otherwise meant to be a
peaceful protest. In Bombay, Gandhiji addressed a large crowd in the
compound of the Elphinstone Mill and lit a huge bonfire of foreign clothes.
Unfortunately, clashes occurred between those who had gone to attend the
welcome function of the Prince of Wales and the crowd that was returning from
Gandhiji's meeting. Riots followed, in which Parsis, Christians, Anglo-Indians
became special targets of attack, as they had joined in the welcome of the
Prince. They were beaten, and their foreign garments were seized and burnt.
Four policemen were beaten to death. The police opened fire and the three-day
turmoil resulted in fifty-nine deaths. When Gandhiji heard about the rioting, he
immediately went to stop the riot. Peace returned only after Gandhiji went
on three days fast. Emboldened by their successful defiance of the government,
non-cooperators became more and more aggressive.
Bengal: C.R. Das and J.M. Sengupta led the Non-Cooperation in Bengal
despite its criticism by the elite section of Bengal, who showed no faith in the
ideology of Gandhiji including Rabindranath Tagore. In the village of
Midnapur, peasants refused to pay taxes to the newly formed Union Board
and organized Peasants Unions. People refused to pay taxes or agricultural
rent to the government or private landlords in the outlying districts of north
Bengal. On 17 November 1921, the visit of the Prince of Wales was also
protested. Basanti Devi, wife of C.R. Das, participated in the protest
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movement. The government adopted severe measures to suppress the
movement, the people were heavily tortured and arrested. In 1921, thirty
thousand Satyagrahiswere taken prisoner.

Assam: Under the Inland Emigration Act of 1859, plantation workers were
not permitted to leave the tea gardens without permission, which was rarely
given. When they learned of the Non-Cooperation, a number of workers
refused to obey the authorities, left their jobs and headed home. The most
important development was in the tea-gardens of Surma valley, where at
Chargola in May 1921 coolies demanded a big wage increase with shouts of
“Gandhi Maharaj Ki Jai”, followed by a massive migration of some 8000 or
nearly 52% of the labour force from there. They believed that Gandhi-Raj was
coming, and everyone would be given land in their own villages. They however,
never reached their homes. They were caught by the police and brutally
beaten up.
Rajasthan: In Rajasthan, again the peasant movements provided strength
to the Non-Cooperation. Here also the poor peasants protested against high
land revenue, varieties of taxes and Begar. The Bijolia movement in Mewar
under Maniklal Verma and the Bhil tribals organized under Motilal Tejawat
acquired impetus from the Non-Cooperation. In 1920, Kisan Panchayats
began to run their own parallel governments. The Panchayats appointed by
the Kisans organized the Charkha movements. Peasants boycotted the
courts and refused to pay the land revenues and the other illegal cesses.
United Provinces: In Oudh, the Non-Cooperation was led by Baba
Ramchandra. He started the movement against Talukdars and landlords,
who demanded high rents and a number of other taxes from the poor
peasants. Peasants were forced to do Begar (forced labour) and work at
landlords’ farms and houses without any payment. Also, they had no
security of tenure, as they could be evicted anytime at the will of the
landlord. The peasant movement demanded reduction of revenue, abolition
of Begar, and social boycott of exploitive landlords. In many places Nai-
Dhobi Bandhs were organized by the Panchayats to deprive the landlords of
the services of barbers and washer men. By October, the Oudh Kisan Sabha
was set up headed by Jawaharlal Nehru, Baba Ramchandra and a few
others. Within a month, over 300 branches were set up in the villages
around the region. However, Congress was unhappy with the subsequent
violent outcome of the Sabha. As the movement spread in 1921, the houses
of Talukdars and merchants were attacked, Bazaars were looted, and grain
hoards were taken over. In many places local leaders told peasants that
Gandhiji had declared that no taxes were to be paid and land was to be
redistributed among the poor. The name of the Gandhiji was invoked to
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sanction all actions and aspirations.
Similarly, Eka Movement was another offshoot of the Non-Cooperation
in Hardoi district. Here again peasants rose against the landlord's unjust
fiscal demands under MadariPasi, a low caste leader who was not inclined
to accept non-violence. However, Gandhiji issued instructions to the
peasants in the United Provinces, where he specifically declared that no
one should withhold rent from the landlords, since we want to turn
Zamindars into friends. But it failed to appeal to the peasants.
Bihar: Bihar won the Gandhiji praise as a province in which the most solid
work was done in connection with Non-Cooperation. 41 high and 600
primary and middle national school with a total of 21,500 pupils had been
established by June 1922, and 48 depots had been set up in 11 districts to
distribute cotton and Charkha. 3,00,000 Charkhas, 89,000 handlooms, and a
Khadi production of 95,000 yards per month were reported from Bihar in
August 1922. Liquor boycott made substantial progress. Mazhar-ul-Haq
started the newspaper Motherland in September 1921 to disseminate the
Hindu-Muslim unity and Gandhian Ideology. However, some violent
incidents did take place in Bihar like 35 cases of looting markets in
Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur, Monghyr and Purnia in January 1921, by men who
claimed to be Gandhi's disciples trying to enforce just prices at some places.
In Bihar, the local issue of the right to graze cattle on common government
wastelands got merged with the Non- Cooperation Movement. The issues of
cow protection and the rights of Kisans were also focused upon. Because of
this linkage, north Bihar, especially Champaran, Saran, Muzaffarpur and
Purnia districts, became the storm centres of the movement by November
1921.
Andhra: In Andhra, the grievances of tribal and other peasants against
forest laws got linked to the Non-Cooperation. In the Gudem Hills of Andhra
Pradesh, a militant guerrilla movement spread in the early 1920’s under the
leadership of Alluri Sitaram Raju. The hill people got enraged when the
colonial government prevented them from entering the forests to graze their
cattle, or to collect fuel wood and fruits. This not only affected their source of
livelihood but were also being denied their traditional rights. Being a fierce
follower of Gandhiji, he encouraged people to wear Khadi and abstain from
drinking. Large bands of forest men were inspired by the idea thatGandhi-
Raj was about to come, where they would get back all their rights. But at the
same time Alluri Sitaram Raju asserted that India could be liberated only by
the use of force, not by non-violence. Therefore, to assert their rights they
sent their cattle forcibly into the forests without paying the grazing tax. The
rebels attacked police stations, attempted to kill British officials for achieving
Swaraj. The revolt lasted till Raju was captured and executed in 1929.
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Malabar: At Malabar region in Kerala, the Khilafat meetings incited
communal feelings among the Moplahs and it became an armed revolt
directed against the British as well as the Hindu landlords of Malabar.
Madras: In support of the Non-Cooperation, there was a low turnout at the
council election almost everywhere, but an exception was Madras, where
very few candidates actually withdrew, and the Justice Party returned as a
majority party in the legislature. The Justice Party launched an active
campaign against the ‘Brahman Congress’ and its Non-Cooperation and
rallied in support of the Montague-Chelmsford Reforms. Because of this
resistance, the boycott of foreign cloth was also much weaker in the Tamil
regions than other provinces of India. In Madras, the Madras Provincial
Congress Committee had remained under the sole control of the Non-
Cooperation.
Similar responses were there in many other regions. For example, in
Orissa the tenants of the Kanika Raj refused to pay taxes. But in Gujarat, the
movement went on purely Gandhian lines. Only Karnataka remained largely
unaffected, where the political awakening would come in the 1930s. So, it can
be seen how from the cities, the Non-Cooperation spread to the countryside. It
drew into its fold different struggles of peasants and tribals. The visions of these
movements were not defined by the Congress programmes. They interpreted
the term Swarajin their own ways, imagining it to be a time when all their
sufferings, grievances and hardships would be over. Yet, when the tribals
chanted Gandhiji’s name and raised slogans demanding ‘Swatantra Bharat’,
they were also emotionally relating to an all-India agitation. When they acted in
the name of Gandhiji, or linked their movement to that of the Congress, they
were identifying with a movement which went beyond the limits of their
immediate locality. The politicization of the interior most regions of the country
can be considered Gandhiji’s biggest contribution to India's freedom struggle.
Despite the repeated appeal for non-violence from the Congress leadership, the
peasants rose in revolt not only against landlords but also against British. It
was in this background that the Chauri Chaura incident was to occur in
February 1922.

9.6. WITHDRAWAL OF THE MOVEMENT AND ITS CRITICAL ASSESSMENT

However, before Gandhiji could launch the proposed civil disobedience
movement, a violent incident happened on 5 February 1922 at Chauri Chaura in
the district of Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, in which the infuriated mob attacked
and burnt down the police station causing the death of twenty-two policemen.
The news of this incident disturbed Gandhiji. Gandhiji was afraid that the
movement might take a violent turn and at his insistence the Congress Working
144
Committee met at Bardoli in Gujarat on 12 February and abruptly called off
the movement. He felt that the people were not yet ready for a non- violent
movement. He also realized that it would be quite easy for the government to
repress violent movements as people would not be able to fight against an all-
powerful government. The withdrawal of the movement, though unpopular at
that stage, was a master stroke of Gandhiji by which he saved the nascent
mass organizational base of the Indian National Congress from brutal
suppression by the police forces of the colonial state. As Mridula Mukherjee
argues, “The retreat that was ordered on 12 February 1922 was only a
temporary one. The battle was over, but the war would continue”.
It also urged the Congressmen to donate their time to the constructive
programmes like popularization of the Charkha, national schools, temperance,
removal of untouchability and promotion of Hindu-Muslim unity. The Khilafat
question also lost its relevance when in November 1922, the Turkish National
Assembly abolished the Ottoman Sultanate and separated the spiritual powers
of the Khilafat from the temporal power of the state. On 1 March 1924, the
Turkish National Assembly voted to depose the Calipha and abolish the
Caliphate. Thus, the first mass scale non-cooperation and civil disobedience
movement virtually came to an end.
The end of the civil disobedience campaign and Gandhiji’s
imprisonment (on 10 March 1922) gave a death-blow to the alliance
between the Congress and the Khilafat Committee. Leaders like Lala Lajpat
Rai, Pandit Motilal Nehru, and Subhash Chandra Bose, attributed the
collapse of the movement to the faulty strategy of Gandhiji. Lala Lajpat Rai
and Pandit Motilal Nehru wrote to Gandhiji from the jail disapproving of his
decision. They took Gandhiji to task for punishing the whole country for the
sins of a place. Why should, Panditji asked, “A town at the foot of the
Himalayas be penalized, if a village at Cape Comorin failed to observe non-
violence”. Maulana Abdul Bari called Gandhiji, “A paralytic whose limbs
were not in control while his mind was active”. Gandhiji was aware that the
sentiments of the country were not behind him at that moment, but he
defended his action as being morally right. He said, “This is a new kind of
struggle. This struggle is intended not to spread hatred but to end it”.
The movement also gained criticism for its programmes did not include
except for the item of land tax, distinct economic demands of the masses such
as increase in wages, social legislation for the workers, and reduction of rent
and debt for the agrarian population. The leadership did not take note of
the fact that the political discontent of the masses had roots in their
economic conditions and not in any abstract sentiment of nationalism.
The Bardoli Resolution of 12 February was also condemned as it also
said, “The Working Committee advises Congress workers and organizations to
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inform the peasants that withholding of rent payment to Zamindars is
contrary to the Congress resolutions and injurious to the best interests of
the country”. It also assured “the Zamindars that the Congress movement is in
no way intended to attack their legal rights, and that even where the Ryots have
grievances, the Committee desires that the redress be sought by mutual
consultation and arbitration”, revealing thereby the anxiety of Gandhiji and other
Congress leaders to protect the basic rights of the landlord classes.
Non-Cooperation Movement, by taking the cause of Khilafat had
brought urban Muslims into the nationalist movement. Some historians have
criticised for mixing religion with politics. As a result, they say, religious
consciousness spread to politics, and in the long run, the forces of
communalism got strengthened. This is true to some extent. There was, of
course, nothing wrong in the nationalist movement taking up a demand that
affected Muslims only. It was inevitable that different sections of the society
would come to understand the need for freedom through their particular
demands and experiences. The nationalist leadership, however, failed to
some extent in raising the religious political consciousness of the Muslims to
the higher levels of secular political consciousness.
As regards the limitations and achievements of the Non-Cooperation
Movement, it apparently failed to achieve its objective of securing the
Khilafat and making good of the Punjab wrongs. The Swaraj was not
attained in a year as promised. It may be noted at this stage that even
though the non- cooperation and civil disobedience movements had ended
in apparent failure, the national movement had been strengthened in more
than one way. Now the masses lost the hitherto all-pervasive fear of colonial
rule and had gained tremendous self-confidence and self-esteem, which no
defeats and retreats could shake. Political freedom might have come years
later but the people began to shake off their slavish mentality. The Congress
became the organizer and leader of the masses in their freedom struggle.

SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS

a. What was the Rowlatt Act?
Answer.

b. Name two leaders of the Khilafat Movement.

Answer.

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c. Why did Gandhiji withdraw the Non-Cooperation Movement?
Answer.

d. What was the Bardoli Resolution?

Answer.

9.7. SUMMARY

Students, in this lesson we learnt how with the passage of the Rowlatt Act,
Jallianwala Bagh massacre and imposition of martial law in Punjab, Khilafat
issue, high prices, droughts and the unsatisfactory Government of India Act
1919, prepared the ground for the emergence of Gandhiji in the Indian
national movement. He launched his first mass movement in India, i.e. the
Non- Cooperation Movement, which was launched formally on 1 August
1920. By offering a new programme of action based on non-violence, truth,
promotion of Swadeshi goods, Gandhiji instilled new faith and hope in the
mind of the people. The movement was started with the aim of getting the
Punjab and Khilafat’s wrongs undone and to establish ‘Swaraj’. Swaraj,
Charkha, and Khadi became symbols of freedom. Nationalist sentiments
and the national movement had now reached the remotest corners of the
land and politicized every strata of population. The incidence of Chauri
Chaura led to the abrupt suspension of Non-Cooperation Movement. This
movement did brought the urban Muslims into the national movement but
at the same time it communalised the national politics. The national
leaders failed to raise the religious political consciousness of the Muslims to
a level of secular political consciousness.

9.8. REFERENCES
Irfan Habib, A People’s History of India: The National Movement Part 2: The
Struggle for Freedom 1919-1947, vol. 31, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2019.
Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885-1947, Gurgaon: Macmillan, 1983.

9.9. FURTHER READINGs

Ishita Banerjee Dube, A History of Modern India, Delhi: Cambridge
University Press, 2019.
Sekar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India,
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New Delhi: Orient Black Swan, 2009.

9.10. MODEL QUESTIONS

1. The role of Gandhiji was supported by the circumstances

surrounding the Indian freedom struggle. Critically Examine.
2. In the history of nationalism, Gandhiji is often identified with the
making of a nation. Describe his role in the freedom struggle of India.
3. Discuss the nature of the Khilafat movement and its role in formation
of the Non-Cooperation movement.
4. Discuss the regional spread of Non-Cooperation Movement.
5. Critical assess the Khilafat and the Non-Cooperation Movement.

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LESSON 10
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MOVEMENT; 1940 SATYAGRAHA AND
QUIT INDIA MOVEMENT

Structure
10.0. Objectives
10.1. Introduction
10.2. Phase I: Launch of the Civil Disobedience Movement
10.3. Phase II of Civil Disobedience Movement (1932-34)
10.4. Communal Award and Poona Pact
10.5. Quit India Movement: Factors Contributing to the Launch of Movement
10.6. Launch of the Movement
10.7. Reactions of the Parties
10.8. Gandhiji’s fast
10.9. Summary
10.10. References
10.11. Further Readings
10.12. Model Questions

10.0. OBJECTIVES
Students, after reading this chapter you will:
 learn about the pivotal role played by Gandhiji in organizing the Civil
Disobedience Movement.
 learn about the Individual Satyagraha of 1940.
 learn in detail about the last anti-colonial mass movement organized
against the British rule in India, i.e. the Quit India Movement.

10.1. INTRODUCTION
Students, in the last lesson you learnt about the role of Gandhiji in
organizing the first mass scale movement in India, i.e. the Khilafat and the Non-
Cooperation Movement. In this lesson, you will learn about his other two mass
movements, i.e. the Civil Disobedience Movement and the Quit India
Movement. The lesson will familiarize you with the reasons, course of action,
the methods adopted in these movements and the Individual Satyagraha of
1940. Lesson also analyses the regional variations and impact of these
movements.

10.2. PHASE I: LAUNCH OF THE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MOVEMENT

The Civil Disobedience Movement also known as ‘Salt Satyagraha’ was
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the second mass movement launched by Gandhiji in the course of India’s
freedom struggle. Gandhiji came back to active politics and attended the
Calcutta session of the Congress in December 1928. When the Nehru
Report came after the annual session of the Congress in Calcutta in December
1928, not only the Muslim League, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Sikh
communalists were unhappy about the Nehru Report, but younger section led
by Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose also regarded the idea of
dominion status in the report as a step backward. In April 1928, the
Independence of India League was formed with Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash
Chandra Bose at Calcutta, which marked an almost split among the leaders
who wanted dominion status and who wanted complete independence.
Ultimately it was resolved that if the British government accepted the Nehru
Report by 31 December 1929, Congress would adopt the report as it is. If the
report is not accepted by the British parliament, Congress would insist on
complete independence and would organize a non-violent, non-cooperation
movement. The one-year deadline passed, and no positive reply came from
the government.
This was followed by the Lahore Session of the Congress, which was
presided by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1929. The Lahore session of the Congress
gave voice to the new militant spirit. It passed a resolution declaring Poorna
Swaraj (complete independence) to be the sole aim of the Congress. On
31December 1929, a newly adopted tricolour flag of freedom was hoisted for
the first time on the banks of river Ravi. 26 January 1930 was fixed as the first
Independence Day, which was to be celebrated every year with the people
taking the pledge that “It was a crime against man and God to submit any longer
to British rule”. It was also decided to employ civil disobedience methods to
achieve the desired goal. The Lahore Congress of 1929 had authorized the
Working Committee to launch a programme of civil disobedience including non-
payment of taxes. The committee also invested Gandhiji with full powers to
plan, launch and organize the movement.
On 31January 1930 soon after the demand for Poorna Swaraj was made,
Gandhiji sent a letter to the Viceroy Irwin stating eleven demands (11 points). In
his letter to the Viceroy he stated that “The British rule has impoverished the
‘dumb millions’ by a system of progressive exploitation, reducing us to
political serfdom and sapped us culturally, degraded us spiritually”. In his
eleven points he made diverse demands, so that all classes within the Indian
society could identify with them and everyone could be brought together in a
united campaign. This included:

For Peasants:
1. Reduce the land revenue by 50%.

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2. Abolish the unjust salt tax and change the monopoly of salt by
British.
For Middle Classes:
3. Reduce the exchange ratio of rupees and sterling.
4. Impose custom duty on foreign clothes and import.
10. Reserve coastal shipping for Indians.
6. Accept Postal Reservation Bill.
General Demands:
7. Reduce the expenditure of civil servants and military expenditures.
8. Abolish the CID Department.
9. Release all the political prisoners.
10. Change in Arms Act so that Indian can keep arms for self-defence.
11. Prohibition of liquor and intoxication.

If the Congress demands were not fulfilled by 11 March, the letter

stated, the Congress would launch a civil disobedience campaign. This
proposal of Gandhiji was ignored by the British Government, therefore, it
made Gandhiji to launch the Civil Disobedience Movement.
Gandhiji chose to break the salt tax in defiance of the government
because tax on salt, in his opinion, was the most oppressive form of tax
which humankind could devise since salt was a basic necessity of human
existence, just like air and water. Some members of the Congress were
sceptical of the choice. But Gandhiji’s choice of using salt was nothing short
of brilliance because it touched a chord with every Indian. It was a
commodity required by all and the poor were hurt the most because of the
salt tax. Indians had been making salt from sea water free of cost until the
passing of the 1882 Salt Act that gave the British monopoly over the
production of salt and authority to impose a salt tax. It was a criminal offence
to violate the Salt Act. Further, Salt Satyagraha had a potential of mass
appeal and mass-involvement as through this Gandhiji also hoped to
unite the Hindus and the Muslims as the cause was common to both the
groups. The salt tax accounted for 8.2% of the British Raj revenue from tax
and Gandhiji knew that the government could not ignore this.
It began with the famous Dandi March of Gandhiji. On 12 March 1930,
Gandhiji left the Sabarmati Ashram at Ahmedabad on foot with 78 other
members (which also included Sarojini Naidu) of the Ashram for Dandi, a
village on the western sea-coast of India, at a distance of about 385 km from
Ahmedabad. On 6 April 1930, Gandhiji reached Dandi. There, Gandhiji
broke the salt law. It was illegal for anyone to make salt as it was a

151
government monopoly. Gandhiji defied the government by picking up a
handful of salt which had been formed by the evaporation of sea. Though
the British officials had reportedly grounded the salt into the sand in the
hope of frustrating Gandhiji’s efforts, but Gandhiji easily found a lump of salt-
rich mud and held it aloft in triumph. With this, he announced, “I am shaking
the foundations of the British Empire”.
The defiance of the salt law was followed by the spread of Civil
Disobedience all over the country. Making salt spread throughout the
country in the first phase of the civil disobedience movement. It became a
symbol of the people’s defiance of the government. Though the movement
was started with the Dandi March by breaking the salt law but as the salt
production had geographical limitations, so in other parts of the country the
movement included picketing of liquor shops, no revenue campaigns in
Bardoli, forest Satyagraha, large scale resignations of rural officials, refusal
of Chowkidari tax. Mobilization of masses was also carried out through new
innovative methods of Prabhat Pheris-singing of national songs, boys were
organized into Vanar Sena (monkeys’ squads), and girls into Manjari Sena
(cats’ squads), distribution of illegal pamphlets (secretly) and magic lantern
shows etc. The movement now spread rapidly. Everywhere in the country,
the people joined Hartals, and demonstrations.
Once the way was cleared by Gandhiji’s ritual at Dandi, defiance of
salt laws started all over the country. Nehru’s arrest in April 1930 for
defiance of the salt law evoked huge demonstrations in Madras, Calcutta
and Karachi. Gandhiji’s arrest came on 4 May 1930, when he had
announced that he would lead a raid on Dharasana Salt Works on the west
coast. Gandhiji’s arrest was followed by massive protests in Bombay, Delhi,
Calcutta and in Sholapur, where the response was most fierce.
After Gandhiji’s arrest Congress Working Committee sanctioned:
a. Non-payment of revenues in Ryotwari areas;
b. No Chowkidari tax campaign in Zamindari areas; and
c. Violation of forest laws in the Central Provinces.

In April 1930, in Tamil Nadu, C. Rajagopalchari led a march- similar to

the Dandi march- from Trichinopoly to Vedaranyam on the Tanjore coast to
break the salt law. The event was followed by widespread picketing of
foreign cloth shops, the anti-liquor campaign etc. Although Rajaji tried to
keep the movement non-violent, violent eruptions of masses and the violent
repressions of the police began.
On 21 May 1930, in Dharasana in Gujrat, Sarojini Naidu along with
Imam Sahib, and Manilal (Gandhiji’s son), took up the unfinished task of
Gandhiji and led non-violent Satyagrahis in a march to the salt depots
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owned by the government at Dharasana Salt Works, some 150 miles north
of Bombay. Over 300 Satyagrahis were severely injured and two killed in the
brutal Lathi charge by the police. There were demonstrations, Hartals,
boycotts of foreign goods, and later refusal to pay taxes.
The movement reached the extreme north-western corner of India and
stirred the brave and hardy Pathans under the leadership of Khan Abdul
Ghaffar Khan, popularly known as ‘Frontier Gandhi’. Under him, the Pathans
organized the society of KhudaiKhidmatgars (or Servants of God) known
popularly as Red Shirts. They were pledged to non-violence and the
freedom struggle.
In the north-east, in Nagaland, Rani Gaidilieu, at the age of 13
responded to the call of Gandhiji and Congress and raised the banner of
rebellion against foreign rule. “We are free people, the white men should not
rule over us”, she declared. She urged the people not to pay the taxes or
work for the British. The government resorted to ruthless repression by
doing Lathi charge and firing. The young Rani was captured in 1932 and
sentenced to life imprisonment. It was the Interim Government of India set
up in 1946 that finally ordered her release from Tura jail.
In Malabar, K. Kellapan led a march from Calicut to Poyannur. In
Assam, Satyagrahis walked from Sylhet to Noakhali (Bengal) to make salt.
In Andhra, a number of camps came up in different districts as
headquarters of salt Satyagraha. Lakhs of people participated in the
movement, including a large number of women.
In Bihar, anti-Chowkidari tax campaign was initiated where villages
refused to pay protection money to the local guards (Chowkidars) who
supplemented the meagre police forces in the rural areas. Rajendra
Prasad took part in the anti-Chowkidari tax campaigns in Bihar.
In Gujrat, a no tax movement took place against the payment of land
revenue. This was most visible in Khera, Surat and Broach districts. Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel led a no-tax campaign in the Kheda district.
Defiance of forest laws took place on a large scale in Maharashtra,
Karnataka and the Central Provinces, especially in areas with large tribal
populations. People went to the ‘reserved forests’ to collect wood and graze
cattle.
In Assam, a powerful agitation led by the students was launched
against the ‘Cunningham Circular’, which forced students and their
guardians to furnish assurances of good behaviour.
In U.P., a no-revenue, no rent campaign was organized against the
government which soon turned into a no-rent campaign against the
Zamindars.
A notable feature of the movement was the wide participation of

153
women for the first time. Women played an important role in the picketing of
liquor shops and opium dens and stores selling foreign cloth. They used
non-violent and persuasive means to convince the buyers and sellers to
change their ways. They were supported by the students and youth in the
boycott of foreign cloth and liquor. Women like Kamla (wife of Nehru),
Swarup Rani (Mother of Nehru), Kasturba Gandhi, Kamladevi
Chattopadhyay, Avantikabai Gokhale, Lilavati Munshi, Hansaben Mehta led
the popular Satyagraha movement.
In November 1930, the British government summoned in London, the
First Round Table Conference of Indian leaders and spokesmen of the British
government to discuss the reforms proposed by the Simon Commission
Report. The Congress party, which was fighting for the independence of the
country, boycotted it. But it was attended by the representatives of Indian
princes, Muslim league, Hindu Mahasabha and some others. But nothing came
out of it. The British government knew that without the participation of the
Congress, no decision on constitutional changes in India would be
acceptable to the Indian people.
In January 1931, Gandhiji was released from prison and efforts were
made by Viceroy Irwin to persuade the Congress to join the Second Round
Table Conference to be held at London. Gandhi-lrwin Pact was signed in
March 1931 due to the efforts of Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, Dr.Jayakar and
others to bring about a compromise between the government and the
Congress. The government agreed to withdraw all the ordinances and end
prosecutions, release all the political prisoners against whom there were no
charges of violence, restore the confiscated property of the Satyagrahis and
permitted the collection or manufacture of salt free of duty by persons
residing within a specific distance of the sea shore. In turn, the Congress
agreed to call off the Satyagraha in exchange for an equal negotiating role in
a Second Round Table Conference at London on India’s future. Many
nationalist or radical leaders were unhappy with this agreement as many
criticized Gandhiji for not extracting definite gains from the government as
Congress failed on three major issues of the time: (a) to persuade the
government to demand that the death sentence on Bhagat Singh,
Sukhdev and Rajguru be commuted to life imprisonment. (b)This pact
also did not accept the demand of immediate return of peasants’ lands
confiscated during the movement (c) Congress demand for a police enquiry
into arrests and atrocities made during the Civil Disobedience was rejected.
Therefore, it was termed as “bourgeoise agreement”, which ignored the
common masses. Gandhiji was greeted by black flowers by the angry
protestors.
However, at its Karachi session which was held in March 1931 and

154
was presided over by Vallabhbhai Patel, Congress decided to approve the
agreement and participate in the Second Round Table Conference. Gandhiji
was chosen to represent the Congress at the conference which was to be
held in September 1931. At the Karachi session of the Congress, another
important resolution of fundamental rights and economic policy was passed
for the first time. It laid down the policy of the nationalist movement on social
and economic problems faced by the country. It mentioned the fundamental
rights which would be guaranteed to the people irrespective of their caste
and religion, it favoured nationalization of certain industries, promotion of
Indian industries, and schemes for the welfare of workers and peasants.
This resolution showed the growing influence of the ideals of socialism on
the nationalist movement. Significance of this session also lies in the fact
that it remained the basic essence of political and economic programmes of
Congress in later years.
Besides Gandhiji, who was the sole representative of the Congress, there
were other non-Congress parties which participated in this conference. This
included Dr. Ambedkar, Indian princes, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communal
leaders etc. These leaders played into the hands of the British. They
claimed to be the representatives of their respective communities and not of the
country. Neither the princes nor the communal leaders were interested in India’s
independence. Dr. Ambedkar raised the issue of separate electorates for the
Dalits, Jinnah demanded more safeguards for the Muslims and the princes were
mainly interested in preserving their position as rulers. Gandhiji alone as the
representative of the Congress raised the demand for the immediate grant of
dominion status to India.
In spite of Gandhiji’s powerful advocacy, negotiations broke down on the
minority issue and British government also refused to concede the basic
nationalist demand of dominion status for India. Therefore, no agreement
could be reached, and the Second Round Table Conference ended in a failure,
but British leaders had acknowledged him as a force they could not suppress or
ignore.
Even during the period of truce (March-December 1931), some
activities kept alive the spirit of defiance in 1931, when India continued to be
hit hard by the world-wide depression. The province of U.P. was especially
hard hit. And the Provincial Congress organization under Jawaharlal Nehru’s
leadership took up the peasant’s cause for reduction of rent and against
large scale eviction of farmers. Though in U.P., the government remitted
large amounts in both revenue and legally enforceable rent but combined
these concessions with harsh measures against the Congress by arresting
Jawahar Lal Nehru along with Tassadaq Sherwani, U.P. Congress President
on 26 December 1931. In NWFP, as many as three ordinances were

155
promulgated and Abdul Ghaffar Khan and a number of KhudaiKhidmatgar
(Congress) workers were arrested on 24 December only because they had
been active in picketing liquor and foreign cloth shops. When the arrest
brought out a protesting crowd, police opened fire, and many were killed.
In Bengal, draconian ordinances and mass detentions had been used in
the name of fighting terrorism. Also, the press was gagged, and Congress
was still facing a ban.
It can be concluded from here that the new Viceroy Willingdon and
Secretary of State had adopted a tough stance against Gandhiji and they
decided not to negotiate any further like the former Viceroy Lord Irwin.
Therefore, even before Gandhiji left for conference there were complaints
regarding the non-release of prisoners, repression of KhudaiKhidmadgars in
NWFP etc. So, the activities of the Congress and severe repression of the
government continued between the period.

10.3. PHASE II OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MOVEMENT (1932-34)

After the failure of talks at the Second Round Table Conference,
Gandhiji returned to India. Gandhiji resumed the Civil Disobedience in
January 1932 with great apprehensions. The repression of government
continued even while the conference was going on and afterwards it was
intensified. Within fifteen months (January 1932 to March 1933) 1,20,000
persons were sent to the jail including Gandhiji. But gradually movement
started fading off as can be noted from the declining number of convicted
cases. If in January 1932 the number of people convicted in one month was
74,302, then this figure sharply declined to 17,817 in February, 6,908 in
March and 9,764 in April. The monthly figure never exceeded 4,000
thereafter. Congress and all its popular methods of peaceful picketing of
foreign shops, secret meetings, symbolic hoisting of Congress flag, salt
Satyagraha, non-payment of Chowkidari taxes, forest law violations, no
revenue and no rent campaigns, were declared illegal by the government.
Despite declining enthusiasm of people and repressive actions by
the government, there were some signs of revival of agitation, which kept
the movement going for about a year and half. Certain new methods also
surfaced in cities like Bihar, Monghyr, which included mass attacks on the
police, release of arrested Satyagrahis, recapturing of the Congress
Ashrams, attempts at attacking colonial symbols, destruction of post offices,
communication and telegraphic lines etc. The two cities of Bombay and
Bengal were referred as the ‘two black spots’ by the British because
Congress strongest hold was in Bombay and Bengal remained a
nightmare for the British because of terrorism. The number of terrorist
cases recorded highest of 104 cases in 1932 before declining to 33 in 1933

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and 17 in 1934.
The second phase of the movement mainly remained limited to the
cities. The participation of peasants during the second phase declined as they
felt betrayed with the withdrawal of the movement. Muslims participation
remained weak. People of high caste also alienated themselves from the
movement because of Gandhi’s crusade against the untouchability.
During the first phase of the Civil Disobedience Movement capitalists
like G.D. Birla (who donated five lakh rupees), Jamunalal Bajaj (who served
as the AICC treasurer for several years and represented Gandhian
leadership in Bombay), Homi Mody, Walchand Hirachand, Lalji Naranji,
Purushottamdas Thakurdas, Lala Sri Ram etc. supported the movement.
However, in the second phase of the movement, the paucity of funds with
the Congress was a clear indication that the business support was not
forthcoming. Business groups pushed towards the collaboration between the
government and the Congress. HomiMody, in his presidential speech to
Bombay Mill-owners' Association in March 1931 said that “Though the
Swadeshi Movement had helped the Indian industry, frequent strikes had
dislocated trade and industry”. To protect the cotton industry, HomiMody
signed the Lees-Mody Pact (October 1933), by which the Bombay textiles
group agreed to further preferences for British textiles in place of Japanese
imports in return for a Lancashire promise to buy more Indian raw cotton.
Also, Tata Birla and other capitalists wanted to strike a good bargain on the
question of financial autonomy in exchange for their cooperation with the
British. Later the suspension of the Civil Disobedience Movement was
welcomed by the capitalist class. In a letter to Birla, Thakurdas wrote, “I think
Gandhiji has done absolutely the right thing”, and further added “after three
years of feverish activity, the country now, I expect, will settle down to
constitutional agitation”. G.D. Birla worked hard for a compromise leading to
the Congress accepting office in 1937.

10.4. COMMUNAL AWARD AND POONA PACT

In the wake of inconclusive Second Round Table talks, British government
had declared that if a consensus was not reached on separate representation of
minorities, a unilateral communal award will be made. Therefore, keeping its
promise, the Communal Award or ‘MacDonald Award’ was announced on 16
August 1932, by the British Prime Minister Ramsay Mac Donald. This was yet
another expression of British policy of ‘Divide and Rule’. The Muslims, Sikhs,
Christians had already been recognized as minorities. And now the Communal
Award declared the depressed classes also to be minorities and entitled them to
separate electorates. Gandhiji protested against the Communal Award and went
on a fast unto death in the Yerawada jail on 20 September 1932.

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Gandhiji saw this as an attack on Indian unity and nationalism. He
argued, “Once we start treating the depressed classes as a separate
political entity, the question of abolishing untouchability would get
undermined. The separate electorates would ensure that the untouchables
remain untouchables in perpetuity. What is required is not the protection of
the so-called interests of the depressed classes but the total eradication of
the roots of untouchability from the country”.
Finally, an agreement was reached between Dr. Ambedkar and
Gandhiji by the efforts of Madan Mohan Malviya. This agreement came to be
called the Poona Pact, which was signed on 24 September 1932. According
to this pact, the idea of having separate electorates for the depressed
classes was abandoned and 148 seats in different Provincial Legislatures
were reserved for the depressed classes in place of 71 as provided in the
Communal Award.
By now, Gandhiji sensed that public response to the movement was
fading slowly and if it was allowed to continue further then it would turn into a
failure. In addition, he knew that the public cannot sacrifice for such a long
time and they need time to recover and rebuild. The Congress officially
suspended the movement in May 1933 and withdrew it in May 1934. The
Congress passed an important resolution in 1934. It demanded that a
constituent assembly, elected by the people on the basis of adult franchise,
be convened. It declared that only such an assembly could frame a
constitution for India. It thus asserted that only the people had the right to
decide the form of government under which they would live. Though the
Congress had failed to achieve its objective, it had succeeded in mobilizing
vast sections of the people in the second great mass struggle in the
country.
Gandhiji once again withdrew from active politics and to undo the
divisive intentions of the government’s ‘Divide and Rule’ policy, Gandhiji
launched a campaign against untouchability- first from the jail and after his
release in August 1933 from the outside. An All-India Anti-Untouchability
League was formed in September, which was later renamed as Harijan
Sewak Sangh.

SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS

a. What was Salt Satyagraha?
Answer.

b. Explain the historic importance of Karachi session of the Congress.

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Answer.

c. What was the ‘Communal Award’?

Answer.

d. What was Poona Pact?

Answer.

10.5 QUIT INDIA MOVEMENT: FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE

LAUNCH OF MOVEMENT
In 1939, with the outbreak of war between Germany and Britain, Lord
Linlithgow had declared India to be at war with Germany without consulting
India. Indian soldiers were sent to fight for the British against the German
troops. Following this declaration, the Congress Working Committee at its
meeting on 10 October 1939, passed a resolution stating that Indian soldiers
should not be sent to the war unless it was consulted first. Further, it stated that
India could not be the party to a war being fought for democratic freedom, when
that very same freedom was being denied to her in her own land. If Britain is
fighting for democracy and freedom, it should prove it by ending imperialism in
its own colonies and establishing full democracy in India. The government
should declare its war aims soon and also as to how the principles of
democracy were to be applied to India.
Responding to this declaration, the Viceroy issued a statement on 17
October wherein he claimed that Britain is waging a war driven with the
intention of strengthening peace in the world. He also stated that after the
war, the government would initiate modifications in the Act of 1935, in
accordance with the desires of the Indians.
Gandhiji's reaction to this statement was, “The old policy of divide and
rule is to continue. Congress has asked for bread and it has got stone”. On
22 October 1939, Congress directed all its ministers to resign immediately.
Accordingly, Congress ministers resigned from eight provinces.
Meanwhile, the war situation worsened for the Allies power (France,
Britain, China, America, Soviet Russia). France had fallen to the Axis
Powers (Japan, Italy and Germany) and Britain was also in danger of
being occupied by the Nazis. There was also a change of government
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in Britain and Conservative Party’s Winston Churchill became the British
Prime Minister in 1940. Congress said that support for the war would be
provided if power would be transferred to an interim government in India. The
Conservatives did not have a sympathetic stance towards the claims made
by the Congress. But in order to pacify the Indians in the circumstances of
worsening war situation and Britain’s keenness to get full Indian support for
the war, the Conservatives were forced to concede some of the demands
made by the Indians.
Though the Conservatives failed to consider the main demand put
forth by the Congress, they did concede to introduce some political reforms
seeing the worsening war situation for Allies. On 8 August 1940, the Viceroy
of India issued a statement, requesting full cooperation from the Indians
during Britain’s campaign in the ongoing Second World War. In return, the
Viceroy promised to give dominion status to India, add more Indian
members in the Viceroy’s Executive Council, formation of an advisory war
council, and the right to form their own constitution. As expected, this ‘August
Offer’ was rejected by the Congress at its meeting at Wardha in August
1940 as it demanded complete freedom from the colonial rule and not the
dominion status. Jawaharlal Nehru remarked that “The dominion status
concept was as dead as a doornail”. Muslim League too did not accept the
proposal as the Viceroy had failed to mention about the creation of a
separate Muslim state called Pakistan.
In the context of widespread dissatisfaction that prevailed over the
rejection of the demands made by the Congress and dissatisfaction with the
Viceroy’s ‘August Offer’, at the meeting of the Congress Working Committee
in Wardha, Gandhiji revealed his plan to launch Individual Civil
Disobedience to affirm the right to free speech. Once again, the weapon of
Satyagraha found popular acceptance as the best means to wage a
crusade against the unwavering stance assumed by British. Vinoba Bhave,
a follower of Gandhiji, was selected to initiate the movement. Sardar
Vallabhai Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Brahma Dutta also participated in
Gandhiji’s call for Individual Civil Disobedience. It encouraged many to
initiate fiery protests all over the country. Anti-war speeches reached in all
corners of the country. The Satyagrahis, who were requesting their fellow
Indians not to support Britain in its war campaign, were arrested. Around
23,000 Satyagrahis were arrested. On 3December 1941, the Viceroy
ordered the release of all Satyagrahis, who were arrested in connection with
the protests. The acquittal order was passed with a hope of gaining Indian
support in the war as the situation in Europe had become critical after
Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour.

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In 1942, the Axis powers seemed on the brink of victory over the major
Allied powers. By the end of March 1942, Japan had seized the whole of
Southeast Asia, occupied Burma and raided Akyab twenty-five times, the
region bordering Chittagong in East Bengal. The defeat of Britain by an
Asian power in Southeast Asia totally shattered the ‘white prestige’. The
British navy did not seem strong enough to counter the Japanese in the
Indian Ocean. Japanese air and naval superiority over the Bay of Bengal
during 1942 made the east coast ports of Calcutta, Chittagong, Madras
and Vizag largely unusable. Thus, India faced an imminent threat on her
eastern land frontier. British abandoned their territories in Southeast Asia
and left their population in lurch. Their fears were reinforced by reports on
how the British had favoured ‘white’ over ‘coloured’ people during evacuation.
The Europeans in Malaya, Singapore, and Burma ordered all forms of
transport for their escape. At the same time, they left the Indian immigrants
there to make their own way by trekking in atrocious conditions through the
dense forests and dangerous mountain ranges. Also, two roads were
provided: Black Road for the Indian refugees and White Road exclusively for
the European refugees. This revealed that British are not concerned with
Indian’s safety and also highlighted the gross racialism of the rulers of India.
The victory of the Japanese in Southeast Asia left Britain
discouraged and now to check the Japanese growing threat near Bengal led
them to adopt two policies, i.e. the ‘demolition’ policy and ‘denial’ policy in
Bengal. The Demolition policy involved the destruction of power stations, oil
installations and wireless cable and telegraph stations. The military
authorities also planned to destroy the ports of Calcutta and Chittagong and
carry out the sinking of river craft and removal of railway stock as part of the
Demolition policy. Denial policy involved removal of rice, wheat, oil and other
essential items and boats and bicycles from the inland areas in order to
prevent Japanese intrusion into India. Such war preparations by the British
army raised the anxiety amongst the Indians.
The fears that the food reserves of the country were being depleted to
feed the army were found everywhere. This encouraged widespread hoarding of
essential goods such as matches, salt, kerosene, mustard oil, sugar, rice, and
holding of precious metals etc., leading to inflation, especially in the coastal
regions. The authorities neglected the signs of distress and permitted the export
of items from these areas resulting in the disappearance of rice from the village
markets. Grievances springing from an acute economic crisis and the lack of
any political or administrative mediation to conciliate the affected population
while enforcing military imperatives such as the denial policy provided a
renewed lease of life to anti-state activities.

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The educated Indians including Gandhiji, also feared Britain following
a ‘scorched earth’ policy in Assam, Bengal and Orissa against the possible
Japanese advance as they did in Burma and Malaya. This act did not garner
much faith among the Indian population who had doubts about the British
ability to defend India against the Axis aggression. Gandhiji also believed
that if the British left India, Japan would not have enough reasons to invade
India.
This Japanese aggression in Southeast Asia, eagerness of British
government to secure the full participation of India in the war, mounting
pressure from China and the United States, led British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill to send ‘Cripps Mission’ to India on 22 March 1942. Under Stafford
Cripps, the mission was sent to resolve the Indian question of a new constitution
and self-government with the Indian political parties and secure their support in
Britain's war efforts. Main terms of the mission were: establishment of a
dominion state, establishment of a Constituent Assembly, and right of the
provinces to make separate constitutions (designed to appease the Muslim
League’s call for Pakistan). According to the Congress, this declaration offered
India a promise that was to be fulfilled in future only after the end of the Second
World War. Commenting on this Gandhiji said, “It is a post-dated cheque on a
crashing bank”. Thus, the Cripps Mission failed to solve the constitutional
deadlock and exposed Britain's unchanged attitude on constitutional advance. It
also made clear that any more silence would be tantamount to accepting the
British right to decide the fate of Indians without consulting them.
The failure of Cripps's proposal to end political deadlock in India and
the fast-moving Japanese aggression against Allies, made the political
scene in India quite threatened. Also, now the nationalist leaders realized
the incapacity of the British to defend India against the threat of Japanese
invasion of India. Therefore, the problem of India's defence became vitally
important.

10.6 LAUNCH OF THE MOVEMENT

After the failure of the Cripps Mission, all hopes of understanding and
cooperation between the British and Congress also disappeared. Gandhiji
now began to inaugurate his systematic campaign for ‘orderly and timely
British withdrawal from India’. The summer of 1942 found Gandhiji in a
strange and unique militant mood in the reflection of which he wrote in
Harijan on 10 May 1942, “The presence of the British in India is an invitation
to Japan to invade India. Their withdrawal removes that bait”. He repeatedly
urged the British, “This orderly disciplined anarchy should go and if as a
result there is complete lawlessness, I would risk it”.

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On 14 July 1942, the Congress Working Committee passed ‘Quit India
Resolution’ during the Wardha conference. On 8 August 1942, the annual
session of All India Congress Committee was held at the historical tank
ground Gowalia under the presidentship of Abul Kalam Azad and the
Wardha proposal was accepted. From here Gandhiji gave a clarion call to
end the British rule and launched the Quit India Movement also known
as India’s ‘August Movement’ or ‘Bharat Chhodo Andolan’. This was
followed by a call for ‘mass struggle on non-violent lines on the widest
possible scale’. The phrase ‘Quit India’ in a spirit of ‘Do or Die’ came into
vogue. He said, “Here is a mantra, a short one, that I give you. Imprint it on
your hearts, so that in every breath you give expression to it. The mantra is
‘Do or Die’. We shall either free India or die trying, we shall not live to see
the perpetuation of our slavery”.
This time the emphasis in the struggle was not on the traditional
Satyagraha but on ‘fight to the finish’. It therefore meant that now
Gandhiji was also prepared for the riots and violence. He now conceded that
the masses could take up arms in self-defence. In March 1942, in his articles
in the Harijan he wrote, “Armed resistance against a stronger and well-
equipped aggressor is to be considered a non-violent act”.
Quit India Movement Resolution was approved which demanded an
immediate end to the British rule in India, declaration of commitment of free
India to defend itself against all types of fascism and imperialism, and
formation of a provisional government after the withdrawal of the British rule.
Gandhiji was chosen as the leader of the struggle. Gandhiji did not issue the
following instructions but he did spell out specific instructions to various
groups in the Bombay ground, which were as follows:

a. Government Servants: Don’t resign but declare your allegiance to

the Congress.
b. Soldiers: Don’t leave the army but don’t fire on your compatriots.
c. Students: if confident, leave the studies.
d. Peasants: if Zamindars are pro-government, don’t pay the rent. If they
are anti-government then pay.
e. Princes: support the masses and accept the sovereignty of people.
f. People of the princely states: support the ruler only if he is anti-
government, declare themselves as part of the Indian nation.

The British already alarmed by the advance of the Japanese army to

the India-Burma border, responded the very next morning, i.e. on 9 August,
by arresting Gandhiji and the entire Indian National Congress leadership, under
the ‘Operation Thunderbolt’ launched by the government to arrest its leaders.
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They were all kept in different jails on the charges of sedition till the end of
the Second World War in 1945 without trial.
Due to the arrest of major leaders, a young and till then relatively
unknown Aruna Asaf Ali (later popularly known as the 'Grand Old Lady' of the
Independence Movement) presided over the All India Congress Committee
session on 9 August and is known for hoisting the Indian flag at the Gowalia
Tank Maidan in Mumbai. This new leader, Aruna Asaf Ali, emerged out of the
vacuum of leadership. Later, the Indian National Congress was declared an
unlawful association, all public meetings were prohibited, its offices were raided
across the country, and all its funds were frozen.
The masses were left without any guidance or course of action after the
arrest of all top leadership on 9 August. As soon as the news of the arrest of
Gandhiji broke, public reactions were immediate, spontaneous and all
pervasive. To everyone's surprise angry and desperate Indians entrusted the
responsibility on themselves to spearhead the movement. Gandhiji’s ‘DO or Die’
call for the people, triggered violence, riots, and protests across the country.
Every region, city and town of the country in the following days witnessed mass
upsurge. The merchants closed their shops, artisans and workers downed their
tools, the students left their schools and colleges, and large crowds flocked
the streets, Satyagrahis offered themselves for arrest, bridges were blown up,
railway tracks were removed, and telegraph lines were cut. Schools were
closed, business was suspended, operations in factories were stopped, labour
strikes paralyzed the supply chains and offices got deserted for no one to
manage it. Similar stories were found from almost all the regions across the
country. Some regions have been analysed as under:
In Ahmedabad, the crowds targeted policemen and anyone wearing
the symbol of colonial culture. On 10 August about 2,000 students took out a
procession. When the police tried to break it up with Lathi-charge, the
students counter-attacked by throwing stones and bricks. Demonstrations
and clashes with the police continued at a high pitch for another two weeks.
The agitating crowds did not relent to police repression and refused to
disperse.
In eastern U.P. and Bihar, people started breaking jails to get the
Congress leaders released. Students responded by going on strikes in
schools and colleges, participating in processions, writing and distributing
illegal news Patrikas and acting as secret messengers for underground
networks.
In rural west Bengal, the peasants were engaged in violent activities as
they were angered by the fact that the British government had introduced
new war taxes and had even forced them to export rice. This open
resistance by the peasants continued until the great famine of 1943

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suspended the movement.
In western India, in districts such as east Khandesh, Satara, Broach
and Surat, large numbers of peasants took part in guerrilla attacks on
government property, lines of communication, and people known to be
sympathetic to British rule. Workers went on strike in Ahmedabad, Bombay,
Jamshedpur, Ahmednagar and Pune. One commentator named
Ahmedabad as ‘The Stalingrad of India’. Western India also took a lead in
bomb and sabotage activities. Of the 664 bomb explosions recorded in India
from August 1942 to January 1944, nearly 76 per cent occurred in the
Bombay Presidency alone.
In Kheda, in addition to the open clashes, there was widespread cutting of
telegraph wires and other minor acts of sabotage on public property. According
to Sir Roger Lumley (Governor of Bombay from 1937-43), Kheda was the most
disturbed district in the Bombay Presidency during August.
Though Gandhiji lost the opportunity to lead the August Movement, it
remained alive, took on a national character and became people's unique
spontaneous upsurge against imperial power in all forms and expressions.
The quick spread and the intensity of the movement took the British Indian
government by surprise. Almost every city and town, in every nook and
corner of the country, witnessed violent activities. Linlithgow privately
described on 31 August as “By far the most serious rebellion since that of
1857”.
The rebellions were spontaneous. There were outbursts of anger but
without leadership, guidance and any viable action plan. The second rank of
leadership like Jaiprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia, Achyut
Patwardhan, Biju Patnaik, Sucheta Kripalani, Aruna Asaf Ali, Usha Mehta,
ChhotubhaiPuranik, and others who went underground in time, made
attempts to redirect the movement in tune with the Quit India resolutions. In
spite of severe risks and challenges, Aruna Asaf Ali managed to
establish a fairly efficient information network at Bombay, from where a
mobile ‘Congress Radio’ under Usha Mehta functioned from different
locations of Bombay for some nearly three months during the Quit India
Movement. Through this radio they disseminated information about the
movement to the people to upkeep their hope and morale and also to
provide a line of command and guidance to distribute arms and ammunition.
Underground publications, such as the Bombay Provincial Bulletin,
Free India, War of India Bulletin, Do or Die News-Sheet, Free State of India
Gazette and the Congress Gazette, also flourished after the official
Congress leadership had been imprisoned and their offices, assets and
printing presses were seized.

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The effectiveness of underground workers depended on the support
of thousands of ordinary people continuing in ordinary occupations. Social,
political and economic networks of common people played exemplary roles
by securing supplies, raising funds, keeping surveillance and giving shelter
to rebels. Yet the revolt disappeared as quickly as they had emerged.
Unarmed crowds could not withstand police repressions, arrests and
military firing for long. State repression knew no bounds. Demonstrators
were also targeted from aircrafts. Under the title 'Operation Thunderbolt'
the British left no means to bring the movement to its end. Terror was let
loose on every public demonstration. By the time the revolt lost its
momentum over one lakh people got arrested, over ten thousand people
had died in police and military firings and thousands of others suffered
injuries.
Apart from mass protests and violent agitations at some places
during the Quit India Movement, people in various states managed to
establish its temporary control over a number of towns, cities and villages. In
some places they successfully established autonomous governments.
Though these governments failed to survive for long, it showcased the
capability of the Indians to manage government and administration on their
own. They demonstrated that the people of India are prepared to carry
forward the fight for independence. Some of the parallel governments were
as below:
The first important parallel government was formed in Ballia (in August
1942 for a week), under Chittu Pandey. He got many Congress leaders
released. Second important parallel government was formed in Tamluk
(Midnapore) from December 1942 to September 1944. It set up a separate
police, and a revenue system. It also carried out cyclone relief work,
sanctioned grants to schools, supplied paddy from rich to the poor. They
also had an active Women’s wing ‘BidyutVahinis’. Its major leaders were
Ajay Kumar Mukherjee, Matangini Hazara, Satish Chandra Samanta,
Sushil Kumar Dhara.
Another parallel government was witnessed at Talcher. The Jatiya
Sarkar or the parallel government formed here was called ‘ChasiMaulia' or
Mazdoor Raj. It was set up on the basis of adult franchise in each village,
block, circle, Pargana and sub-division. Some government servants
voluntarily resigned, burnt their European dresses and uniforms, set fire to
the official records and swore allegiance to the new Raj. People established
their Raj almost in the whole of Talcher except Talcher town where the ruler
and his entourage were under the British protection. A national militia was
also formed by the rebels. However, British crushed them which resulted in
heavy casualties. The Talcher was one of the five places in India where in
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1942 the masses were machine- gunned from air because of the intensity of
the movement.
However, the longest parallel government was run in Satara
(Maharashtra) namely the Prati Sarkar, which continued for three long years
from August 1943 to May 1946 against the British rule, under the guidance of
leaders like Y.B. Chavan, and Nana Patil. It added a legendary chapter in the
glorious freedom struggle of India. It was an armed offshoot of the 1942 Quit
India movement. British rule was effectively overthrown in large parts of Satara
district of western Maharashtra during those three years. Prati Sarkar
adopted a guerrilla type of struggle, and it operated in over 150 villages with
solid peasant support. They made raids on Taluka treasuries and armouries.
The Prati Sarkar took over many functions of the government. It also had a
judicial branch made up of people's courts. The decisions were made
through popular consensus. Village committees catered to the day-to-day
requirements of the community and took care of the basic services by
establishing many public utilities like a market system, supply and
distribution of food-grains. Under this government a youth militia was
formed named Toofani Sena to protect the government from attacks by the
British forces and protect the peasants from exploitation and violence of the
local rich. It fought against the imperial government by attacking its major
establishments like the railways and postal department. Village libraries
and Nyayadan Mandals were organized, prohibition campaigns were
carried on and ‘Gandhi marriages’ were organized. There can be no denial of
the fact that these storm centres reflected the real mass rebellion at the
grass root levels. These people of India kept the Quit India Movement
alive when their leaders were in jail.
Jayaprakash Narayan, one of the founder members of CSP, escaped
from the prison in Nepal in November in 1942, and with the assistance of
another socialist leader, Ram Manohar Lohia, formed a parallel government on
the Nepal border which lasted till 1944.
In the absence of leadership, there were stray incidences of violence
and damage to government property. Many buildings were set on fire,
electricity lines were cut, and communication and transport lines were
broken. According to John F. Riddick, a renowned British author, stated that
throughout India, there were 2,500 instances of telegraph wires sabotage by
the protestors. By the end of 1943, official figures indicated that 208 police
stations, 945 post offices and 312 railway stations had been attacked and
much damaged, and 63 policemen were reported killed.
The government resorted to violence in order to quell the agitation.
There were mass floggings and Lathi charges. The same official figures also
tell about the British repressive measures: 91,836 persons had been
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arrested and jailed, three-fifth of them in the provinces of Bombay, U.P. and
Bihar. Those killed in police and army firing were officially computed at
1,062, though according to Jawaharlal Nehru the actual figures were
approximately 5,000. Women in the affected villages also suffered sexual
harassment including rape. In Bihar alone, 57 battalions of British troops had
to be deployed to restore order in the region. Many people lost their lives
when machine-gunned from the air (as happened in Bihar). Heavy
collective fines were imposed on rebellious towns and villages, amounting
to Rs. 90 lakh- a big amount in those days. A letter by Ram Manohar Lohia
to Viceroy Linlithgow documents the strength of the movement at its peak
and also gives a glimpse into the British actions to suppress the
movement. Lohia had written that the British government had killed
50,000 people and injured several more during the movement. According to
Lohia, while the Russian Revolution saw barely one percent of the country's
population participating, in India no less than 20 percent people took part.
He said that the real strength of the Quit India Movement lay in the masses
who had participated in it.

10.7 REACTIONS OF THE PARTIES

All the other major political parties including Muslim League rejected
the Quit India plan and mostly cooperated with the British. When on 22 October
1939, Congress ministers resigned from eight provinces in protest against
Viceroy Lord Linlithgow's action of declaring India to be a belligerent in the
Second World War without consulting the Indian people, Muhammad Ali Jinnah
called upon Indian Muslims to celebrate 22 December as ‘Deliverance Day’
from Congress. He stated, “I wish the Muslims all over India to observe 22
December as the ‘Day of Deliverance’ and thanksgiving as a mark of relief
that the Congress regime has, at last, ceased to function”. The resignation of
Congress ministers from eight provincial legislatures, enabled the Muslim
League to gain in strength in Sindh, Bengal, and north-west Frontier. Jinnah
asked more Muslims to enlist in the army to participate in the Second World War
as their cooperation in the war effort would be rewarded with
greaterpolitical gains from the British. On 23March 1943 ‘Pakistan Day’ was
observed. The League was not in favour of the British leaving India without
partitioning the country first. Muslim League came with its own ‘Divide and Quit’
demand. They demanded this because they were of the view that the Muslims
form the minority and Congress would form the Hindu Empire.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the leader of the Dalits, who had joined the
Viceroy’s Executive Council as a labour member just before the onset of the
campaign, also did not support it. Still there are evidences of Dalit
participation in the Quit India movement in various regions and cross-caste
unity cannot be denied. For instance, in Satara, in western Maharashtra, the
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Satya Shodhak Samaj founded by the reformer Jyotiba Phule in the late
nineteenth century provided the base and the main striking force to the Quit
India Movement.
The Communist party supported the war waged by the British
since they were allied with the Soviet Union. Despite the lack of support to
the movement by the communist group, workers did provide support by not
working in the factories.
Subhash Chandra Bose, by this time, was busy in organizing the Indian
National Army and the Azad Hind government from outside the country.
The Hindu Mahasabha openly opposed the call for the Quit India
Movement and boycotted it officially under the apprehension that the
movement would create internal disorder and will endanger internal
security during the war. They also considered the movement as “sterile,
unmanly and injurious to the Hindu cause”. The other Hindu organization,
RSS, also remained aloof from it.

C. Rajagopalachari, popularly known as Rajaji, also opposed the Quit

India Movement and instead advocated dialogue with the British.“Rajaji
thought a fresh Satyagraha foolish when the situation demanded dialogue
and reconciliation with both the British and the Muslims”, writes
Ramachandra Guha in The Makers of Modern India. He was of the view that
eventually the British are going to leave the country, so launching another
Satyagraha was not a good decision at a time when the country was
threatened with invasion by Japan. Therefore, he reasoned that passivity
and neutrality would be harmful to India's interests at such crucial times. He
also advocated dialogue with the Muslim League, which was demanding the
partition of India. He subsequently resigned from the party following his
differences with Gandhiji over these two issues.
Lastly, the princely states and Indian bureaucracy also did not support
the movement and funded the opposition.
However, Gandhiji stood firm on the need for an immediate struggle
against British. Gandhiji’s increasingly radical tone continued to create great
excitement in the country, even when he sounded almost fatalistic: “At this
(immediate achievement of freedom) may not come to pass, I don’t mind. It
is worth fighting for; it is worth staking all that the nation has”. (Harijan, 5
July 1942)

10.8 GANDHIJI’S FAST

During the Second World War most of the Congress leaders were
detained in jails including Gandhiji at Aga Khan Palace in Pune. During

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his imprisonment in Aga Khan Palace, both his personal secretary Mahadev
Desai and his wife Kasturba Bai Gandhiji, died. The British excused
Gandhiji for accepting violence and insisted Gandhiji to condemn violence
committed by people. In response to British, Gandhiji despite his
deteriorating health announced his 21 day fast on 10 February 1943 at Aga
Khan Palace. Instead of condemning the violence, Gandhiji fasted on it. It
raised public anger many a fold. The popular response to the news of the
fast was immediate and overwhelming. Protests were organized at home
and abroad through Hartals, and demonstrations. M.S. Ane, M.R. Sarkar
and H.P. Modi resigned from the Viceroy's executive committee
demanding release of Gandhiji.
Gandhiji’s fast was an important political intervention on his part, but
popular protests began to weaken soon, and normalcy returned to most
areas. Famine conditions, which made their appearance in Bengal from
early months of 1943, also began to affect political activity of a mass
character in eastern India.
Although the British released Gandhiji on account of his deteriorating
health in 1944, Gandhiji kept up the resistance, demanding the release of all the
Congress leaders. Most freedom fighters were kept in prison till 19410.
While the Congress leaders were languishing in jails, the Muslim
League was consolidating its position and establishing itself as a major
force. The reorganization of the League reached fruition during this period.
The League like Congress introduced two Anna memberships and began to
build up bases in villages. It promised not only an Islamic state but also a
peasant utopia where Muslims peasants will be as prosperous as Hindu
moneylenders, landlords or Zamindars. On the whole, this process made the
demand for Pakistan seem realistic.

SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS

a. Name two leaders who ran underground activities during the Quit
India Movement.
Answer.

b. Why is the Quit India movement called the ‘Spontaneous Movement’?

Answer.

c. Name some places where the parallel governments were formed during
the Quit India Movement.
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Answer.

d. Explain Cripps Mission.

Answer.

10.9 SUMMARY
Students, in this chapter we learnt how the non-action of government
over Nehru Report seeking dominion status; resolution of ‘Poorna Swaraj’
passed in the Lahore Congress session of 1929, and failure of government
to agree upon Gandhiji’s Eleven Point Ultimatum, compelled Gandhiji to start
his second major mass movement, i.e. the Salt Satyagraha or his
second Civil Disobedience Movement. The historic Dandi march (12 March-
6 April 1930), marked the launch of the Civil Disobedience Movement. It
soon spread all over the country under the leaders like C. Rajagopalchari
(Tamil Nadu), Sarojini Naidu (Gujrat), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (NWFP),
Rani Gaidilieu (North-East), Kellapan (Bengal) etc. A notable feature of the
movement was the wide participation of women for the first time. However,
the movement was called off in accordance with the Gandhi-Irwin Pact
signed in March 1931. After the failure of the Second Round Table
Conference in 1932, movement was resumed. Congress officially
suspended the movement in May 1933 and finally withdrew it in May 1934 to
concentrate on constructive programmes, which aimed to end
untouchability.
The failure of ‘Cripps mission’ was one of the key factors contributing
towards Gandhiji’s decision to call for his third mass movement of ‘Bharat
ChhodoAndolan’ (Quit India Movement) on 8 August 1942, aiming at
attaining immediate independence from the British rule. Gandhi’s call for
immediate independence was also heavily influenced by his fear of a possible
Japanese invasion of India and the supposed British inability to defend India
during such a situation. One of the important milestones of the Quit India
movement was Gandhiji's partial admission to the significance and
inevitability of violence in mass movements. Though he himself remained stuck
to non-violence all through his life, Gandhiji acceded that under certain
conditions the use of violence would not injure the national cause. In an excerpt
from interview in 1942 to Louis Fischer Gandhiji told, “There may be violence
but then again the landlords may cooperate by fleeing”. The Quit India
Movement will always be remembered as the only national movement where
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people became their own guide in this final phase of freedom. The Quit India
Movement set in a motion a series of events forcing the British to leave India
in 1947.

10.10 REFERENCES
Irfan Habib, A People’s History of India: The National Movement Part 2: The
Struggle for Freedom 1919-1947, vol. 31, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2019.
Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885-1947, Gurgaon: Macmillan, 1983.

10.11 FURTHER READINGS

Ishita Banerjee Dube, A History of Modern India, Delhi: Cambridge
University Press, 2014.
Sekar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India,
New Delhi: Orient Black Swan, 2004.

10.12 MODEL QUESTIONS

1. The Salt Satyagraha was more than just a symbolic act of breaking the
salt law that shook an Empire. Examine.
2. What were the immediate factors which prompted the launch of the Quit
India Movement?
3. Explain how Gandhiji’s mass appeal was undoubtedly genuine in the
context of Indian politics and how it contributed to his success in
broadening the basis of nationalism?

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Lesson 11
FREEDOM STRUGGLE IN PRINCELY STATES

Structure
11.0. Objectives
11.1. Introduction
11.2. Princely States and the Raj
11.3. Rising National Consciousness in the Princely States and Changing
Stance of Congress towards It
11.4. Freedom Struggle in the Princely States
11.5. Integration of Princely States
11.6. Summary
11.7. References
11.8. Further Readings
11.9. Model Questions

11.0. OBJECTIVES
Students, after reading this chapter you will be able to:
● learn about the growth of political consciousness in these princely states.
● learn about the changing stance of the Indian National Congress
towards the freedom struggle of the princely states.
● learn about the role played by Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel in the
integration of princely states.

11.1. INTRODUCTION
Students, before the independence of India, there were as many as
600 princely states in India, also referred to by the British as native states.
They covered about two-fifth of India’s territory and about one-fifth of India’s
population. These states varied from very large to very small in area and
population and were scattered all over the country interspersing the British
Indian areas. The Indian National Congress had from the beginning adopted
a policy of non-interference in the princely states’ affairs, which Gandhiji too
upheld. However, nationalism began to cast its influence in the states
despite this policy of non-interference. So, this chapter will look into the early
relations between the British and the princely India. This will also discuss the
role played by the Indian National Congress in the freedom struggle of
princely states and its re-organization with India after independence.

11.2. PRINCELY STATES AND THE RAJ

The variegated pattern of the British conquest of India, and the different
stratagems through which the various parts of the country were brought under
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colonial rule, had resulted in two-fifths of the sub-continent being ruled by Indian
princes. The areas ruled by the princes included Indian states like Hyderabad,
Mysore and Kashmir that were equal in size to many European countries, and
numerous small States who counted their population in the thousands. The
Revolt of 1857, constituted an important watershed in the evolution of British
policies towards the Indian princely states. It was not only diagnosed that the
annexation policies had contributed to the Revolt, but it was also found that
territories under indirect rule were less affected by the disturbances than those
under direct rule. And not only that, states like Gwalior and Hyderabad rendered
so much valuable services in containing the Revolt that the British government
began conceiving of the princely states as a “few patches of native government
which proved to break waters in the storm which would have otherwise swept
over us in one great wave”. So, as India passed into the hands of the Crown,
the Queen's Proclamation of 1 November 1858 made a commitment to “respect
the rights, dignity and honour of the native princes as our own”. For the British
these states were the necessary allies, to keep in check the rise of other
colonial powers and nationalist tendencies in India. Accordingly, the princes
were given autonomy over their territories, and all these princely states were
given protection against aggression, internal or external, in return for recognition
of British paramountcy. Lord Irwin, the Viceroy, addressed these princes as
‘joint workers’ and ‘brother builders’.
This two-fifth of the territory of the Indian subcontinent was under the
‘indirect rule’ of the Company and later the Crown. Quite often, the princely
states had to experience intensive British intervention, although formally no
more annexation occurred. Though the princes ruled over their princely states
but it was governed by the British Residents and Political Agents. The
Residency system involved a redefinition of sovereignty, which was encoded
in the new terminology of ‘paramountcy’, under which the Indian states were left
with “domestic sovereignty”, while sovereignty beyond their borders lay with the
Company as the superior imperial power. The actual terms of the subordinate
sovereignty of the Indian states varied from case to case, depending on the
status of the princes and the circumstances within which treaties with them had
been signed. But in effect, British practice often reduced some of these very
‘sovereigns’ to the de facto status of puppets or virtually confined them within
their own palaces. The rulers were constantly pressurised to grant immunities
and concessions and in the end, such successive demands corroded the
authority of the Indian states. During the period 1878-86, the States had to
withstand systematic intervention and contraction of their domestic sovereignty.
They had to relinquish control over the railway tracks and other communication
systems within their territories, although they had to pay for their construction,
refrain from exporting salt to other parts of British India and accept British

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Indian currency as legal tender. This interventionism reached its height during
the administration of Lord Curzon (1898-1905). He, on the one hand,
recognised the princes as integral parts of imperial organisation and invited
them with due honour to the grand Coronation Durbar of 19011. But, on the
other hand, he also brought them under stricter control. In 1900 he prohibited
their foreign travel; in 1902 he pressurised the Nizam of Hyderabad to sign a
more favourable treaty regarding the administration of Berar; he forced the
princes to pay more for the Imperial Service Troops; deposed a number of
rulers and brought sixty-three states under temporary British administration. No
wonder, as Scindia of Gwalior later confessed, that the princes simply hated
“the tyranny” of Curzonian paternalism. In 1909, the princes were called in to
service by the British to deal with the nationalist challenge. The princes
responded very quickly and positively, and in a true loyalist tune. Most of them
banned any public meetings, clamped down on the nationalist newspapers and
any sort of anti- imperialist activity was banned in their territories. It was
possible for the Company to effectively exert pressure because of the rivalry
among the Indian rulers and factionalism within their courts, which prevented
the formation of a joint front, the dream of Nana Fadnavis to forge a
confederacy of Indian princes pitted against British power never really
actualised.
The outbreak of the First World War brought the larger princes close
to the Raj. They donated generously to war funds, provided military service and
welcomed army recruitment in their states. Consequently, they wanted some
recognition of their services from the British government at the end of the war.
They asked to be spared from the increasing vigilance of the British political
department and from the political turmoil in British India, and demanded greater
participation in the consultations carried out by the British with Indians. They
made use of the enquiries initiated by the government with regard to
constitutional reforms to ask for a Chamber of Princes, an advisory body with
direct access to the Government of India. The recommendations of Montford
Reforms (Montague-Chelmsford Reforms) created the Chamber of Princes
having no say in the internal affairs of individual states and having no powers to
discuss matters concerning existing rights and freedoms. It was supposed to
discuss and deliberate on issues that would advance the common interests of
Princely India and British India, and it was to be led by a Chancellor,
necessarily a member-prince, under the watchful eyes of the Viceroy.
The extent of sovereignty of the paramount power still remained
undefined in 1927, so relations between Indian princes and the Crown were not
well defined. Therefore, the Indian states committee in 1927 was appointed to
inquire into the relationship between the Indian states and the paramount power
and to suggest ways and means for more satisfactory adjustments of the

175
existing relations between them and British India. Sir Harcourt Butler was its
Chairman and hence this committee was popularly known as the Butler
Committee. It recommended that paramountcy must continue to be supreme. It
explicitly recognised the duty of the British ‘to protect the Prince(s) against
attempts to eliminate (any of them) and to substitute another form of
government through ‘a widespread popular demand for change’. The committee
failed to define paramountcy and left it vague and open.
Throughout history, a corrupt and decadent ruler was checked to some
extent by the challenge of internal revolt or external aggression. British rule
freed the princes of both these dangers, and they felt free to indulge in gross
misgovernment and adopted a hostile attitude to the national movement.
Most of the Princely States were run as unmitigated autocracies, with absolute
power concentrated in the hands of the ruler or his favourites. Appalling
economic, political, and social conditions prevailed in most of them. Peasants
were oppressed, land revenue and taxation were excessive and unbearable,
education was retarded, health and other social services were extremely
backward, and freedom of the press and other civil rights hardly existed. The
rulers had unrestrained power over the state revenues for personal use, and
this often led to ostentatious living and waste. In several states serfdom,
slavery, and forced labour flourished. The burden of the land tax was usually
heavier than in British India and there was usually much less of the rule of law
and civil liberties. Some of the more enlightened rulers and their ministers did
make attempts, from time to time, to introduce reforms in the administration, the
system of taxation and even granted powers to the people to participate in
government. But the vast majority of the States were bastions of economic,
social, political and educational backwardness, for reasons not totally of their
own making. It was the British government that was responsible for the situation
in which the Indian States found themselves in the twentieth century. As the
national movement grew in strength, the princes were increasingly called upon
to play the role of ‘bulwarks of reaction’. Any sympathy with nationalism, such
as that expressed by the Maharaja of Baroda, was looked upon with extreme
disfavour. Many a potential reformer among the rulers was gradually drained of
initiative by the constant surveillance and interference exercised by the British
Residents. There were honorable exceptions, however, and some States, like
Baroda and Mysore, succeeded in promoting industrial and agricultural
development, administrative and political reforms, and education to a
considerable degree.
So during all these years, the Raj had been using its subordinate
allies- representing old and in British perspective, authentic India- as
effective tools against the new forces of nationalism in the provinces. Little
was done to induce democratic constitutional changes in the states to

176
bring them at par with the political developments in British India. This made
the princes, unprepared to face the future, increasingly more alarmist about
the nationalist leaders challenging their internal autonomy of rule.

11.3. RISING NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE PRINCELY STATES

AND CHANGING STANCE OF CONGRESS TOWARDS IT
Till the 1920’s Congress, representing the broad democratic spectrum
of opinion in the country had consciously distanced itself from the princes as
well as from the political mobilisation in the princely states. This strategy of
non- interference continued even with the coming of spectacular mass
mobilisation in the early Gandhian phase - ostensibly, out of respect for the
princes' traditional rights of sovereignty, secondly, the Congress leadership
was aware that the movements in Princely States were linked to the appeals
based on class, religious and linguistic identities and could result in more
regional and religious fragmentation. Thirdly, it had limited financial
resources. And lastly, on the ground that a confrontation with the Indian
Princely States was likely to weaken the Congress in conducting its main
struggle against foreign rulers.
When extremism and terrorism became powerful in the first decade of the
twentieth century and later when the Non-Cooperation movement rocked the
subcontinent, the princes rendered valuable service in containing the rising tide
of nationalism in their territories. In all these states throughout the 1920s
and 1930s there were signs of discontent among the people against the denial
of civil liberties and among the Kisans against the avarice of the landlords
who had the backing of the state governments. Now and then, there were
subdued demonstrations which were suppressed with brute force. The visit of
the Prince of Wales, boycotted by the Congress, was made somewhat
worthwhile because of the warmth and grandeur of princely welcome.
The advance of the national movement in British India, and the
accompanying increase in political consciousness about democracy,
responsible government and civil liberties had an inevitable impact on the
people of the States. Therefore, in the 1920s, popular movements under the
educated middle class subjects of the princely states began to appear
in all these states in the form of Praja Mandals or States’ People’s
Conferences. These were organized in Mysore, Hyderabad, Baroda, the
Kathiawar States, the Deccan States, Jamnagar, Indore, and Nawanagar.
These Mandals were eventually affiliated to a national body called the All
India States’ People’s Conference, founded in 1927 with its headquarters at
Bombay. It was attended by 700 political workers from the States. The men
chiefly responsible for this initiative were Balwantrai Mehta, Manikial Kothari
and G.R. Abhayankar. It was formed to coordinate nationalist movements in

177
the native states. This body was mainly guided by the Congress. It mainly
demanded responsible government in Indian states through representative
institutions under the aegis of the rulers. It also demanded that the princes
concede the right to free speech, free press, security of person and property,
democratic rights and constitutional changes, to which many of the princes
responded with sharp vengeance and massive repression. However, if most
of them were sensitive about guarding their autonomy and sovereignty,
there were some exceptions too- like Baroda, Mysore, Travancore and
Cochin- who had initiated, albeit in limited spheres, some constitutional
changes.
It was in 1927-28 that the Congress came to the conclusion that the
existence of the States could not be ignored and that the States' people
formed an integral part of the Indian nation. The Congress at its Calcutta
session of 1928, through a resolution urged the princes to “introduce
responsible government based on representative institutions” and expressed its
“sympathy” and “support” for the “legitimate and peaceful struggle” of the people
of the Indian states striving to attain “full responsible government”. Again in
1929, Jawaharlal Nehru, in his presidential address to the famous Lahore
Congress, declared that “The Indian states cannot live apart from the rest of
India. . . the only people who have a right to determine the future of the states
must be the people of those states”. Such verbal sympathy, however, counted
for little for the States' peoples' movements and for the clandestine Congress
branches, which were dealt with stiff resistance from most of the princes.
Therefore, when the Civil Disobedience movement started, the Raj's princely
clients- barring a few exceptions like Bhavnagar, Junagadh or Kathiawar-proved
to be as dependable as before in suppressing Congress activities in their
respective territories.
Although the States could never remain totally insulated from the
political waves of British India, the princes remained steadfast loyalists to
their imperial protectors, trying to keep the nationalist agitation at bay. To
further strengthen the princes, the central legislature was made to pass the
Indian States (Protection) Act in 1934 which aimed at censoring the press
and restricting the activities of individuals and organisations inimical to
the interests of the princes and their regimes throughout India. This measure
was directly aimed at curbing any encouragement from ‘British India’ to
growth of national sentiment among the people of the States. The princes
too, for safeguarding their own interests, insisted upon the continuance of
the British connection in any form of government that might be set up in
India in the future.
In the mid-thirties, two associated developments brought about a distinct
change in the situation in the Indian States. First, the Government of India
178
Act of 1935 projected a scheme of federation in which the Indian States were to
be brought into a direct constitutional relationship with British India and the
States were to send representatives to the Federal Legislature. The catch was
that these representatives would be nominees of the Princes and not
democratically elected representatives of the people. They would number one-
third of the total numbers of the Federal legislature and act as a solid
conservative block that could be trusted to thwart nationalist pressures. The
Indian National Congress and the AISPC and other organizations of the States’
people clearly saw through this imperialist manoeuvre and demanded that the
States be represented not by the Princes’ nominees but by elected
representatives of the people. This lent a great sense of urgency to the
demand for responsible democratic government in the States.
The second development was the assumption of office by Congress
Ministries in the majority of the provinces in British India in 1937. The fact that
the Congress was in power created a new sense of confidence and expectation
in the people of the Indian States and acted as a spur to greater political
activity. The princes too had to reckon with a new political reality — the
Congress was no longer just a party in opposition but a party in power with a
capacity to influence developments in contiguous Indian States.
In the late 1930s, the Congress left-wingers, like Bose and Nehru,
became more insistent on the desirability of greater intervention in the princely
states, in order to bring them at par with the political developments in British
India. Whereas, even in the Haripura session in 1938, the Congress had
reiterated its policy that movements in the States should not be launched in the
name of the Congress, but should rely on their own independent strength and
fight through local organizations. A few months later, on seeing the fighting spirit
among the people and their capacity to struggle, Gandhiji and the Congress
changed their attitude on this question. Explaining the shift in policy in an
interview to the Times of India on 24 January 1939, Gandhiji said: “The
policy of non-intervention by the Congress was, in my opinion, a perfect piece of
statesmanship when the people of the States were not awakened. That policy
would be cowardice when there is all- round awakening among the people of
the States and a determination to go through a long course of suffering for
the vindication of their just rights . . . The moment they became ready, the
legal, constitutional and artificial boundary was destroyed”.
Following upon this, the Congress at Tripuri in March 1939 passed a
resolution enunciating its new policy: “The great awakening that is taking
place among the people of the States may lead to a relaxation, or to a
complete removal of the restraint which the Congress imposed upon itself,
thus resulting in an ever increasing identification of the Congress with the
States’ peoples”. It removed the earlier restraint on the Congress activities in

179
the states. Now there was greater identification between the Congress and
the Praja Mandals. In February 1939, Nehru accepted the presidency of the
AISPC and the Tripuri Congress endorsed the scheme of joint action for
freedom struggle. Thus, the ending of the oppressive rule of the Indian
princes became a part of the nationalist movement’s programme and the
aim of building a united India was firmly laid down. As a result of this
evolving situation, in late 1938 and early 1939 many of the princely states
witnessed an unprecedented escalation of popular agitation, spearheaded
by the local Praja Mandals, clandestine Congress branches and outside
political leaders from British India. Significant agitation took place in Mysore,
Jaipur, Rajkot, Travancore, Kashmir and Hyderabad- Gandhiji himself taking
a leading role in Rajkot. While some states like Mysore and Rajkot became
more conciliatory and made token concessions, the larger states resisted
the pressure resolutely, with help coming, although belatedly, from the
British authorities. As a result of such confrontational line up, peaceful
demonstrations soon deteriorated into numerous acts of violence, and later
into communal conflicts in southern Deccan, forcing Gandhiji to withdraw the
movement in April 1939. The situation was again back to normal by autumn.
The outbreak of the Second World War brought about a distinct
change in the political atmosphere. Congress Ministries resigned, the
government armed itself with the Defence of India Rules, and in the
States as well there was less tolerance of political activity. Things came to a
head again in 1942 with the launching of the Quit India Movement. This
time the Congress made no distinction between British India and the Indian
States and the call for struggle was extended to the people of the States.
The people of the States thus formally joined the struggle for Indian
independence, and in addition to their demand for responsible government
they asked the British to quit India and demanded that the States become
integral parts of the Indian nation.
11.4. FREEDOM STRUGGLE IN THE PRINCELY STATES
To illustrate the pattern of political activity in the Indian States, it is
instructive to look more closely at the course of the movements in some of
the States. Students, let us discuss some of them.
Vaikom Satyagraha started in Travancore (modern-day Kerala) for temple
entry of the depressed classes in March 1924. According to the prevalent caste
system in Kerala and the rest of India, low-caste Hindus were neither allowed to
enter into the temples nor were they allowed even to walk on the roads that
led to the temples. Therefore, Satyagraha was aimed at securing freedom to all
sections of society to pass through the public roads leading to the Sri Mahadeva
Temple and was led by prominent leaders from Ezhava community. The
Satyagrahis made batches of three and entered the temple. They were resisted
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and arrested by the police. Gandhiji, Chatampi Swamikal and Sree Narayana
Guru supported the movement. The movement gained prominence in the
entire India and support came from far and wide.
In the Kakinada meet of the Congress party in 1923, T.K. Madhavan
presented a report citing the discrimination that the depressed castes’
people were facing in Kerala. It was after this session that it was decided
that movements against untouchability needs to be promoted. In Kerala,
a committee chaired by K. Kelappan was formed comprising people of
different castes to fight untouchability. The committee chaired by K.
Kelappan, comprised of T.K. Madhavan, Velayudha Menon, K Neelakantan
Namboothiri and T.R. Krishnaswami Iyer. In February 1924, they decided to
launch a ‘Keralaparyatanam’ in order to get temple entry and also the right to
use public roads for every Hindu irrespective of caste or creed. On 23rd
November 1925, all the gates of the temple were opened to Hindus except
the eastern gate. In 1928, backward castes got the right to walk on public
roads leading to all temples in Travancore. This was the first time that an
organized movement was being conducted on such a massive scale for
the basic rights of the untouchables and other backward castes in Kerala.
In the princely state of Patiala, Congress staged several small
Satyagrahas between 1922 and 1926. Two of them were connected to the
Akali movement in Punjab. Jawaharlal Nehru participated in the Guru-ka
Bagh Satyagraha of 1922–23 and the Jaito Satyagraha of 1924—the first
over a minor issue of the cutting of a tree in a disputed land between the
ousted Mahant and the new Shiromoni Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee
(SGPC), and the second over the forced abdication of the Maharaja of
Nabha, a major patron of the Akali movement. Malcolm Hailey, the ‘astute
governor of Punjab’, deftly dealt with the situation by promulgating the Sikh
Gurdwara and Shrines Act in 1925, which accepted SGPC control over Sikh
religious centres.
One of the important agitations in 1938-39 took place in the princely
state of Rajkot in Gujarat. Rajkot is a name intimately associated with the
name of Gandhiji for his father had been the Diwan (Chief Minister) of
this place and he had spent his youth here. Inspired by Gandhiji, Lakhajiraj,
its ruler, had also encouraged nationalist political activity by giving
permission to Mansukhlal Mehta and Amritlal Sheth to hold the first
Kathiawad Political Conference in Rajkot in 1921 which was presided over
by Vithalbhai Patel. He himself attended the Rajkot and Bhavnagar (1925)
sessions of the Conference, donated land in Rajkot for the starting of a
national school that became the centre of political activity’ and, in defiance of
the British Political Agent or Resident, wore Khadi as a symbol of the
national movement. He gave a public reception to Jawaharlal Nehru during
181
his visit to the State. Lakhajiraj died in 1939 and his son Dharmendra
Singhji, a complete contrast to the father, soon took charge of the State. The
new Thakore was interested only in pleasure, oppressive taxation regimes,
curbs/restrictions on civil liberties such as freedom of speech, freedom to
assemble, lack of access to education and other welfare services. Most of
the state revenue that was earned by imposing heavy taxes on its citizens,
was spent on the upkeep of the luxurious lifestyles led by the princely ruler.
The ground for struggle had been prepared over several years of
political work by political groups in Rajkot and Kathiawad under Mansukhlal
Mehta, Amritlal Sheth, Balwantrai Mehta, Phulchand Shah, Vrajlal Shukia,
and U.N. Dhebar, etc. A general strike broke out at Rajkot in August 1938
around the demand for better working conditions in a state owned cotton
mill. The strike however became a catalyst to a political movement
accompanied by civil disobedience. Vallabh Bhai Patel intervened reiterating
the usual demands for representative government and reduction in land
revenue. In return for a promise by the Rajkot Darbar to undertake political
reform, the movement was withdrawn. But later at the insistence of the
British Resident the ruler of Rajkot reverted back to repressive measures.
Inevitably it created a political reaction which Gandhiji could no longer ignore
in view of Subhash Bose’s forthright statement in support of the political
struggle in the Princely States. Eventually the Rajkot Satyagraha became
fractured as Muslims and depressed classes in the state demanded
separate representation in the committee which the ruler of Rajkot agreed to
set up, to prepare a plan for administrative and political reforms. It became
clear that the Darbar at Rajkot would manipulate communal and caste
sentiments to wreck the movement following the usual strategy of divide and
rule practised by the British paramount power.
Although not the first Satyagraha in princely India, it represented
the first major attempt to secure constitutional change through mass civil
disobedience. Rajkot was also the first serious test of the Indian National
Congress' ability to carry the fight against the British into princely India,
and, as well, of princely India's readiness to take part in the All-India
struggle. It was a test of the indirect support to be given by the paramount
power to the princes and of the durability of the latter against the
nationalists. It was a test of the methods of Gandhiji in a yet untried political
environment. The most significant aspect of this event, however, is the
overriding fact that for the nationalists the Rajkot Satyagraha was, by
Gandhiji's own admission, a test that failed. Lastly, the movement set off a
chain reaction, in that it had a mobilizing effect on many people in the
country. Many had realized the importance of popular resistance and hence,
a series of movements and resistances began cropping up in different parts

182
of the country.
In 1938, Patel in the altered circumstances agreed to lead the Baroda
Praja Mandal and resolved to undertake Civil Disobedience in the state unless
taxes were reduced. The Satyagraha did not take place since the Baroda court
decided to reduce the taxes and promised to enlarge the Legislative
Assembly.
Provoked by the repressive measures of the Mysore rulers, the non-
Brahmin rural leadership decided to merge with the Congress movement. In
1941 the Mysore state permitted labour unions. The Congress in its turn started
extending its influence among the workers as well. The climax of all these
initiatives was the formidable “Mysore Chalo movement” in 1947 which forced
the Maharaja to accept responsible government.

11.5. INTEGRATION OF PRINCELY STATES

With the impending lapse of British paramountcy, the question of the future
of the princely states became a vital one. Unsurprisingly, when the British
announced their departure, most of the princes thought it to be the best
moment to claim independent statehood. The issue of the princely states
was not an easy affair to resolve.
It was, indeed, to the credit of the national leadership, especially
Sardar Patel, that the extremely complex situation was handled in a manner
that defused the situation to a great degree. The ‘Iron man of India’, Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel was valued on one hand for being politically astute and on
the other hand for his pragmatic acumen, necessary to bring together the
more than 500 bits and pieces of royal territories into the fold of the Indian
union.
On 27 June 1947, Sardar Patel who was in charge of the States’
Ministry in the interim cabinet, helped by V.P. Menon, the Secretary in the
ministry, were given the task of negotiating with the princes. They appealed
to the patriotic feelings of the rulers to join the Indian dominion in matters of
defence, communication and external affairs--- the three areas which had
been part of the paramountcy of the Crown and over which the states had
anyway no control. On other occasions he reminded them of the possibility
of anarchy in the event of their refusal to join. He also introduced the
concept of ‘privy purses’ as a payment to be made to the families of the
princes for their agreement to integrate with India.
In the following days, Patel, Menon and Mountbatten managed to
convince most of the princes to join the Indian union. Bikaner, Baroda and a few
other states from Rajasthan were the first to join. As the day of independence
drew closer, Patel decided on using force where necessary, for instance in the
case of the Maharaja of Orissa. Most of the states succumbed to a

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combination of diplomatic pressure, popular movements and their own
realization that independence was not a realistic alternative and signed the
Instruments of Accession.
The ultimate protection provided by the British enabled the rulers of the
states to withstand popular pressure to a considerable degree, as happened in
Rajkot. As a result, there was a much greater tendency in these States for the
movements to resort to violent methods of agitation — this happened not only
in Hyderabad, but also in Travancore, Patiala, and the Orissa States among
others. For example, in Hyderabad (largest and richest of all the princely
states), Nizam Mir Usman Ali ruled over a large Hindu population. He was very
clear on his demand for an independent state and blatantly refused to join the
Indian dominion. He drew support from Jinnah and the tussle over Hyderabad
grew stronger over time. Both requests and threats from Patel and other
mediators failed to change the mind of the Nizam, who kept expanding his
army by importing arms from Europe. Things took a turn for the worse when
armed fanatics (called Razakars) unleashed violence targeted at Hyderabad’s
Hindu residents. Then the State Congress ultimately resorted to violent
methods of attack, and, in the final count, the Nizam could only be brought into
line by the Indian Army. The armed takeover of Hyderabad through ‘Operation
Polo’ by the Indian troops in September 1948 was celebrated as a democratic
step by the people of Hyderabad state. Later, in an attempt to reward the
Nizam for his submission, he was made the Governor of the state of
Hyderabad.
The case of Jammu and Kashmir was little different. It was a princely
state with a Hindu king ruling over a predominant Muslim population which
had remained reluctant to join either of the two dominions. The case of this
strategically located kingdom was not just very different but also one of the
toughest as it had important international boundaries. At the time of
partition of India, Hari Singh, the ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, delayed
making a decision about the future of his state. But when thousands of
armed Pathan tribesmen from Pakistan infiltrated it, Hari Singh realized
that he needed Indian help. He reached out to Prime Minister Jawaharlal
Nehru and Patel who agreed to send troops on the condition that the
Maharaja signs an Instrument of Accession, handing over control of
defence, foreign affairs, and communication. By signing on this legal
document on 26 October 1947, Hari Singh, the Maharaja of Jammu and
Kashmir, agreed that the state would become a part of India.
Thus it can be said that the unification of India was made possible not
only by the efforts of Sardar Patel but also by the potential presence of mass
pressures. The ease of integration and merger of the states into Indian
Union, with minimal use of coercion in the process, was due to the fact that

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political mobilisation had already been under way in most of the states. Finally,
as the tricolour rose proudly to announce its independence on 15 August 1947,
the ‘Iron man of India’ along with Menon had managed to bring together more
than 550 states under the governance of the Indian union.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. When was the All India State People Conference founded?

b. What were Praja Mandals?

c. Name two political leaders who played a significant part in the

integration of the Princely States to Indian Union?

d. What was the object of the Butler Committee?

11.6. SUMMARY
Students, in this chapter we have learnt that the British Indian Empire was not
entirely governed by the British; it was divided into two prominent parts British
India under direct administrative control of the government, and Princely India,
which covered about two-fifth of the British Empire in India and was
administered jointly by princes and British Residents. For sheer reasons of
self-preservation, and protection of Indian Empire from falling apart, the
paramount power discouraged the growth of representative institutions in the
princely States and people from princely states suffered from economic, social,
cultural, and political backwardness. But once the migrated people saw the
swing of national movement in British India they understood the importance of
personal liberty and responsible government. Thus, the middle class
intelligentsia formed Praja Mandals and All India States’ People’s Conference
(AISPC) in 1927 under the leadership of Balwantrai Mehta, Maniklal Kothari and
G.R. Abhayankar to urge for a responsible government in the princely states.
Initially the attitude of the Indian National Congress was one of non- intervention
in the princely states as stated in the 1920 Nagpur resolution, but further owing
to increased political awakening of the people this stance was fully changed in

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the Tripuri session of 1939. On one hand Princely states acted as path
breakers in the extension of the national movement into the princely domains,
while the State People’s Conference was an example of successful forging of
ties between the Congress and the Praja Mandals. Finally efforts of Vallabhbhai
Patel settled the problem of the States. Sooner, 562 States signed the
Instruments of Accession and integrated to Union of India.

11.7. REFERENCES
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern
India, New Delhi: Orient Black Swan, 2004.
Bipin Chandra, India’s Struggle for Independence: 1857-1947, New Delhi:
Penguin Books, 1988.

11.8. FURTHER READINGS

Ishita Banerjee Dube, A History of Modern India, Delhi: Cambridge
University Press, 2014.
Rajendra Lal Handa, History of Freedom Struggle in Princely States, New
Delhi: Central News Agency, 1968.

11.9. MODEL QUESTIONS

1. In the overall discourse of India’s freedom struggle, what status did
Princely States have? Discuss the changing stance of the Congress
towards the freedom struggle of Princely States.
2. Was there an active attempt made by the nationalist leaders to integrate
the subjects in Princely States with the masses elsewhere? Examine.
3. What was the role of Patel in the integration of Princely States?

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LESSON 12

REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT SINCE 1905

Structure
12.0. Objectes
12.1. Introduction
12.2 Early Developments
12.3 Revolutionary Movement in Bengal
12.4 Revolutionary Movement in Maharashtra
12.5 Revolutionary Movement in Punjab
12.6 Revolutionary Movement in other countries
12.7 Summary
12.8 References
12.9 Further Readings
12.10 Model Questions

12.0. OBJECTIVES
Students, after reading this lesson you will be able to:
 understand the emergence and growth of revolutionary ideology in the
country.
 know about revolutionary movements, which predominantly operated
in Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab.
 gain knowledge about the role of Ghadar Movement and other related
revolutionary activities outside India.

12.1. INTRODUCTION
Students, this lesson will examine the revolutionary movement in the early
twentieth century within the country. The revolutionaries were mainly active in
regions – Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab. Dissatisfaction with the non-violent
struggle gave impetus to the revolutionary terrorist movement. It moved away
from individual heroic action to a mass-based movement and from religious
nationalism of earlier revolutionaries to secular patriotism. This lesson attempts
to explain the revolutionary activities outside the country. The main activities of
the Ghadar movement will be traced. Special attention will be given to the
Babbar Akali movement as well. The ideal of freedom which inspired the
revolutionaries inculcated the spirit of building new societies within and outside
the country.

12.2. EARLY DEVELOPMENTS

The revolutionaries adopted an armed struggle method which sought a short-
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cut to freedom via violence and conspiracies contrary to methods and
policies of moderates and extremists. Actually, the revolutionary movement was
not the offspring of a spirit of revenge. It was a protest against the continuance
of British control. It was born of a conviction that the time had come when India
must become a great, free and united nation. Early phase of revolutionary
movement in India was mainly from 1900 onwards in which Bengal,
Maharashtra, Punjab, U.P, Orissa, Bihar and Madras provinces participated
but it predominantly operated in Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab as these
regions were more politically active than other parts of the country. The earliest
attempt of revolutionary culture in India was made in Maharashtra when
Umaji Naik of Ramoshi tribe harassed the British officials due to his anti- British
feeling. Later, he was caught and hanged by British authorities in 1827.
Thereupon, Ram Chandra Ganesh Gore organised the Kolis a community
between 1830-1850 which murdered several policemen and officers. The
uprising of 1857 was the major armed revolt against the foreign rule.
Immediately after the 1857 revolt, Bengal witnessed the agitation against the
British indigo planters. This was perhaps the first direct mass action against
British authority or the foreign exploiting capital. The Hindu Patriot under the
editorship of Harish Mukherjee took up the cause of the peasants of Bengal.
The cultivator’s plight was published in Calcutta journals and dramatized in the
play NeelDarpan by Shri Deenabandhu Mitra. Ultimately, the government was
obliged to set up the Indigo Commission which gave relief to the peasants
and later indigo cultivation in Bengal had practically stopped after this. Apart
from Bengal, Punjabi Sikhs started the Kuka movement which raised the spirit of
patriotism in the hearts of its native people. In Maharashtra also, Vishnu Shastri
Chiplunkar and Bal Gangadhar Tilak roused revolutionary tendencies in the
minds of the younger generation. Several political associations came into
existence to spread revolutionary spirit among the people.
The idea of forming secret societies came to the mind of early
revolutionaries and found support from the leaders like Rajnarayan Bose
and Jyotrindra Nath Tagore. Rajnarayan Bose, known as the father of
the revolutionary movement in Bengal was the first to organise two societies
with revolutionary ideas. In 1865, Rajnarayan Bose along with Jyotrindra
Nath and Nabagopal Mitra founded the Patriot Association. In 1866,
Rajnarayan Bose founded another society known as Promotion of Nation
Feeling (JatioGaurabSampadani Sabha)at Midnapur. Two more societies,
Calcutta Student Community in 1875 and Sanjivani Sabha (Life Giving
Society) in 1878 were formed. These secret societies aimed at ideological
and physical training of the youth. Their ‘thought’ and imagination however
were of revolutionary character. In 1900, Atmonnati was started by Satish
Mukherjee and Nibaran
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Bhattacharya. Atmonnati took a definite revolutionary turn when Bipin Ganguly
became its leader and performed their main revolutionary action in 1914.
Another society, the Dawn Society was founded in 1902 by Nagendra Nath
Ghose, but the real organiser was Satish Chandra Mukherjee. The main
purpose of this society was to import a better education to young men so
that they could be better soldiers of freedom. It nurtured the revolutionary spirit
among the masses.
The secret societies started by Rajnarayan Bose, Nabagopal Mitra and
Jyotirindra Nath grew to full size under the leadership of Aurobindo Ghosh and
Barinder Ghosh. Aurobindo Ghosh, began to think of launching a secret society
for the growth of revolutionary cult in the country. He sent Jatin Banerjee, a
young Bengali soldier belonging to the army of Baroda to Bengal in 1900 and
two years later in 1902, Barinder Kumar Ghosh, his brother with the mission of
setting up a revolutionary organization there. It was with their efforts that the first
proper revolutionary secret society known as Anushilan Samiti (Calcutta) was
founded on 24March 1902 by Pramath Nath Mitra. It trained the youth in
physical drill, wielding the Lathi and the sword, dagger play and other activities.
Very soon branches of Anushilan Samiti were established throughout Bengal.
The ultimate aim was to equip members with military training in order to raise a
national army to overthrow British rule.
Another member of Anushilan Samiti, Sarla Devi the niece of
Rabindranath Tagore started Pratapaditya Utsav in Bengal. She also
opened an academy at Ballygunj, Calcutta for the instruction of Bengali
boys in fencing and Jiu-Jitsu. Anushilan Samitiof Calcutta was not just a
physical culture society; it had also an intellectual side as regular classes
were held on topics like the American War of Independence, Lives of
Mazzini and many more. It could not proceed further as it was banned along
with other Samitis under the Samitis Act of 1908.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. Where and by whom was the earliest attempt of revolutionary activity
made in the country?

b. Write a few sentences on Neel Darpan?

c. Who founded Anushilan Samiti?

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d. Who was Rajnarayan Bose?

12.3. REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN BENGAL

After the partition of Bengal in 1905, Young Bengalis particularly
members of Calcutta Anushilan Samiti were dissatisfied with the methods of
the Swadeshi agitators and their passive resistance policy. Soon after the
expulsion of Jatin Banerjee from the Anushilan Samiti of Calcutta,
Barinda Kumar Ghosh became the leader of young members of the Samiti
who wanted a more violent struggle. This radical group under Barinder
Ghosh and Bhupendranath Dutta started weekly newspaper Jugantar in April
1906 to preach more violent armed struggle against the foreign rule. Shortly,
Jugantar became an important organ of revolutionary propaganda. In the
issues of Jugantar, Nikhileshwar Roy Maulick, Kartik Dutt and Kiran
Mukherjee secretly published their articles. This Jugantargroup of people
were the advocates of revolutionary activities in the country. The word
Jugantarwas taken from the title of a social novel Jugantarby SivanathSastri.
According to Gopal Halder, the paper Jugantarbreathed revolution in every
line and pointed out how revolution can be effected by collection of arms,
reduction of armed forces, by terrorism of the Russian type armed rising,
guerrilla warfare and so on. Soon, Barinder Ghosh, Bhupendranath Dutta,
Avinash Bhattacharya along with Ullaskar Dutta collected 11 revolvers, 4
rifles and a gun to start their armed struggle against the foreign rule.
Barinder Ghosh also started a bomb factory at Manicktalla garden house,
Calcutta. In this factory, Ullaskar Dutta had some knowledge about how to
manufacture the bombs. They also had the expert guidance of Hemchandra
Das Kanungo, who had gone to France to learn the manufacture of the
bombs in 19012. Hemchandra Das, became a bomb expert of
Manicktalla garden party.
The first bomb made by Manicktalla revolutionaries was meant for killing
Sir Bamfylde Fuller, Lt. Governor of Eastern Bengal. Attempt was made by
Prafulla Chaki on October 1907, when he threw a bomb on Fuller, but he did
not succeed. The next attempt was to blow up the train of the Lt. Governor
of Bengal, Andrew Frazer on 6 December 1907. Though, the train had been
derailed near Midnapur district, yet no casualty took place. The next target of
Manicktalla party was Mr. Kingsford who had ordered several men to be
flogged for minor of offences during Swadeshi movement in Calcutta. As he had
been transferred to Muzaffarpur in Bihar, two members of the Manicktalla gang,
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Prafulla Chaki and Khudi Ram Bose were sent to kill him. Even, before this
attempt, revolutionaries had also tried to kill Kingsford by sending him a
book. A bomb was fitted in that book and sent by postal parcel in his name.
Kingsford received the parcel but did not open it. Later, police recovered that
book. So, revolutionaries failed in this attempt to murder him. On 30 April 1908,
Prafulla Chaki and Khudi Ram Bose threw a bomb on a carriage which was of
the same colour as that of Kingsford but unfortunately two innocent ladies, Mrs.
Kennedy and Miss Kennedy were killed. After the incident, Prafulla Chaki shot
himself dead while Khudi Ram Bose was arrested and hanged on 11 August
1908. The bravery of these youths echoed through the whole of country.
On 2 May 1908, the police searched the Manicktalla garden house and
seized bombs, dynamites and cartridges. More than thirty people were arrested
including Aurobindo Ghosh, Barinder Kumar Ghosh, Bhupendranath Dutta,
Hemchandra Das, Ullaskar Dutta and Upendra Bannerji. This created a
sensation in the country. Narendra Gosain, one of the arrested persons,
became an approver of the police. He was shot dead by Satyendra Bose and
Kanai Lal Dutta in the prison before he could give his statement. Both were
hanged. By performing these terrorist actions, the revolutionaries made it
clear that they would not tolerate unpopular officers, informers and approvers of
the police. However, heavy punishments were awarded in the Manicktalla
garden case also known as Alipore Conspiracy Case in which Barinder Kumar
Ghosh along with others were sentenced for life imprisonment and several
others received various terms of imprisonment by the judgement of the court on
6 May 1909 but the movement instead of dying down acquired new vigour.
Murders, dacoities and wrecking of railway trains continued.
The Government tightened their repressive measures but
revolutionaries continued to reorganise and intensify their activities. Several
Samitis likeDacca Anushilan Samitiand associations were banned under
Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1908. In 1913, Indian Press Act was passed
which led papers like Jugantarto recourse to underground publications. The
government was now ruthless in suppressing the movement and would not give
the revolutionaries any breathing time. A number of prosecutions followed one
after another in quick succession, the Midnapur Case, Howrah Conspiracy
Case and Dacca Conspiracy Case. Hard punishments were awarded to all
accused in these cases. During the imprisonment of revolutionaries, police used
third degree and inhuman methods for them. Revolutionaries took two years to
regroup themselves for further activities in the country. They started with
dacoities and murders. The re-organised Jugantar group under Jatin Mukherjee
emerged as the main organization which took prominent part to carry
revolutionary activities in Bengal. Jatin Mukherjee took up the leadership
immediately after the Alipore Case (May 1908). Due to his efforts Jugantar

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group established its many branches in Bengal. He helped Rash Behari Bose to
set up an organization in upper India. He also emerged as leader of Bengal
revolutionaries in many independent organisations. Revolutionaries murdered
several government officials, police constables and suspected informers.
The activities of the Jugantargroup included many dacoities to raise
funds to buy weapons. After committing a dacoity, they secretly circulated
pamphlets entitled Jugantar to reveal their purpose of dacoity in which it was
announced that, “These sums of money had been taken as loans on
behalf of the future national government which would return them after
independence”. Along with these murders and dacoities, the Jugantarparty
was also carrying on a pamphleteering campaign. Jugantarleafletsinboth
Bengali and English were regularly circulated throughout Bengal and other
provinces. Early Indian revolutionaries from the very beginning had realized
the importance of literature. Bankim Chandra’s novels, Rabindranath Tagore
and D.L. Roy’s national songs, newspapers of Tilak and Aurobindo Ghosh
all stressed the need of maximum sacrifice for national emancipation.
Arun Chandra Guha’s First Spark of Revolution remarked that Sonar
Bangla was the first underground publication of revolutionary literature.
These writings were full of revivalist ideas. BartamanRananiti (The Modern Art
of War) was the principal revolutionary text book which was seized from
Manicktalla garden house (392 copies). SarathiJubakMandali’s magazine
Sarathipublished another seditious article PatriotisminGita to inspire the
people. But the greatest single influence for revolutionary movement came
from Bankimchandra’s novel Anandmath published in 1882 with its
BandeMatram hymn. Through essays as well as novels, Bankim Chandra
sought to evoke a new interest in the history of the country, striking a note
typical of nationalism the world over. In Anandmath, a band of Sanyasis or
holy men attempted to free Bengal from Muslim yoke. It was fated that the
Muslims be followed not by Hindu but by British rulers. From Bankim also,
from the bank of SanyasisinAnandmath, some terrorists obtained the model
on which to base their revolutionary violent secret societies. The hero of
Anandmath,Sayananda also formed a secret society and ultimately
succeeded in creating a new Bengal out of its post tradition.
Bengal and Punjab revolutionaries performed a daring act together
at Delhi. After the annulment of partition of Bengal in 1911, the capital was
transferred from Calcutta to Delhi. Lord Hardinge, who had been appointed
Viceroy of India, was making his official entry to Delhi, the new capital of
India on 12 December 1912. When the procession reached Chandni Chowk,
a bomb was thrown at the Viceroy. He had a narrow escape, but became
unconscious with an injury at the back of his head. His body guard was
killed. The assailant could not be traced. After a long investigation, 13
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persons were arrested in this case which came to be known as the Delhi
Conspiracy Case. Master Amir Chand, Awadh Behari and Bal Mukund were
hanged in this case. But the chief accused of this conspiracy, Rash Behari
Bose safely escaped. Two more bomb explosions of similar kind were seen
at Maulvi Bazaar in Calcutta on 27 March 1913 and at Lahore on 17 May
1913.
In Bengal, Dacca AnushilanSamiti was another major revolutionary
group along with Jugantar party. It was mainly active during 1910-1914. This
group was organized under the dynamic leadership of Pulin Behari Das.
This group was more militant in character as compared to Anushilan Samiti
of Calcutta. Within a short time, it established their branches in Mymensingh,
Dacca and its influence spread in Assam, Bihar, Punjab, U.P., Madhya
Pradesh and Poona. It was reported that Dacca Anushilan Samiti had about
500 branches mostly in the rural areas. It also occasionally published a
secret pamphlet named Swadhin Bharat. The central headquarters of the
Samiti was situated at Dacca. When Pulin Behari Das was arrested in Dacca
Conspiracy in 1910 and sentenced six years jail imprisonment, Ashutosh
Das Gupta, Makhan Lal Sen and Narendra Mohan Sen became its leaders.
The important venture of Dacca Anushilan Samiti was Barha dacoity
committed on 5 June 1908, in which thirty one person raided the house of a
rich man and looted 25,000 rupees. However, revolutionaries committed
these dacoities to get money for organizing war against the British Empire,
but they made it principles never to touch the body of a lady. Dacca
Anushilan Samiti committed several murders and dacoities from 1910 to
1915 to maintain the pace of revolutionary movement. But the two
conspiracy cases at Barisal dealt it a serious blow as most of its important
members and leaders were arrested in these two cases. Government also
seized an important document of Dacca Anushilan Samiti known as ‘District
Organisation Scheme’ which imparts many secrets of the Samiti and it
gave a serious setback to its functioning as an organization.
The branches of Dacca Anushilan Samiti were set up at places like
Anushilan Samiti at Banaras by Sachindranath Sanyal in U.P. around 1908
and Anushilan Samiti at Bihar led by Rebati Nag, carried the revolutionary
propaganda in their provinces. But both Samitis could not do much for
revolutionary work and collapsed by 1913. However, from 1904 to 1914,
there were several other revolutionary groups, which existed in Bengal such
as Barisal group of Swami PrajnananandaSaraswati, the Mymensingh group
of Hemendra Kishore Acharya Choudhary, the Howrah group of Nani Gopal
Sen Gupta, the Atmonnati group of BepinGanguly and Anukul Mukherjee,
the Chandernagore group of Srish Ghosh, Serempur group of Satish Sen
Gupta and Asutosh Das, but Jugantar and Anushilan groups remained more
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active to carry revolutionary propaganda and activities in Bengal and to
some extent to other provinces of the country. The main difference between
the Jugantar party andAnushilan Samiti was that Anushilan developed as
a much wider organization but very much centralized and that led to its
leaders to think more of the organization than the revolutionary objective. On
the other hand, theJugantargroupdeveloped more as movement than as
an organization whereas the Dacca Anushilan Samiti much developed as an
organization rather than a movement or with the movement.
The revolutionaries in Bengal were successful in an event, when a large
consignment of 50 Mauser pistols and 46,000 rounds of ammunition were
appropriated by them from the Rodda firm in Calcutta through a sympathetic
employee in 1914. It was carried by the Atmonnati group under the
leadership of BipanGanguly and Anukul Mukherji. The operation took place on
27 August 1914. Soon, major partition of pistols came under the Jugantar group
of Jatin Mukherjee as Atmonnati was then one of the affiliated units of the
Jugantar group. The Sedition Committee reported that, “Authorities have
reliable information to show that 44 of these pistols were almost at once
distributed to nine different revolutionary groups in Bengal and is certain that
these pistols were used by different revolutionary groups in 54 cases of
dacoities and murders”. This was considered as a landmark in the revolutionary
history of Bengal.
The First World War created favourable conditions for Indian
revolutionaries in their struggle against British in India. Germany was fighting
against Britain and revolutionaries took advantage of this situation. The
Jugantar party under the leadership of Jatin Mukherjee, prepared an armed
uprising with the support of Germans. According to the original plan, arms were
expected to be landed at three places, i.e. Rai Mangal in Sunderbans, Orissa
coast and Goa. With these German arms, a guerrilla force would have been
created to have an armed rising in different areas. This would have to be
backed by a mutiny among the Indian armed force. The German consuls at
Bangkok, Java and Shangai were keeping contact with the Bengal
revolutionaries. Martin also known as NarenBhatacharya (M.N. Roy) went to
Batavia, on the behalf of the Jugantar group for the discussion of arms
help from Germany. There, he met with German representative, Theodor
Hellferich and learnt that a cargo of arms and ammunitions was on its way to
Karachi to assist the Indian revolution. The ship known as S.S Maverick
contained 30,000 rifles with 300 rounds of ammunition each and two lakhs of
rupees. After discussion with M.N. Roy, the Germans agreed to divert the
ship to Bengal. Then, Bhattacharya returned to Bengal to make
arrangements for receiving the
S.S. Maverick. He along with Bholanath Chatterjee and Atul Ghosh made

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arrangements for receiving the ship. By this time, the revolutionaries also
received a sum of 33,000 rupees through Harry and Sons. British
government got the information about Indo-German plan of unloading the
arms at Rai Mangal. A map of Sunderbans and a cutting from a Penang
newspaper containing some information about the ship of the S.S. Maverick
was also discovered. This resulted in the historical gun battle in which the
leaders of Jugantar group Jatin Mukherjee along with Chittapriya were killed
by police. Two Bengalis were also arrested. The ship S.S. Maverick then
went back to America. Soon, M.N. Roy was also arrested. So, the whole
plan of armed rising by Bengal revolutionaries with the help of German aid
failed. According to Rowlatt Committee, when Maverick plan failed, then
German Consul General at Shanghai arranged two more ships, first carried
20,000 rifles, 8 lakh cartridges, 200 pistols, hand grenades along with two
lakhs rupees and second ship carried 10,000 rifles, 10 lakhs cartridges,
hand grenades, but this attempt also did not become successful.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. Write a few sentences about Jugantar?

b. In which incident Prafulla Chaki and Khudi Ram Bose were involved?

c. Write a few sentences on Anand Math?

d. What was the basic difference between the Jugantar party

andAnushilan Samiti?

12.4. REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN MAHARASHTRA

The revolutionary activities in Maharashtra resulted in the foundation of
Abhinava Bharata by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Savarkar proceeded to
London in 1906, his organization continued to flourish in India. It took up the
revolutionary activities and tried to spread its branches all over Maharashtra. It
preached the gospel of freedom and sang songs and ballads of freedom ‘Free
India from the foreigners yoke’. The life of Mazzini was translated by
Savarkar in Marathi, of which 2000 copies were sold in three months. There was
at that time a network of secret societies all over the province. Many colleges
and higher educational institutions in Poona and Bombay had at least one
secret society or branch of the Abhinava Bharata. The young men, thus
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saturated with revolutionary ideas, went away after completing their education
and became the leaders in their towns and cities and started branches of
Abhinava Bharata or new secret societies in Maharashtra, Mysore and Madhya
Pradesh. The society also established contact with Bengal.
The society’s activities included collection of and training in arms and
explosives wherever and whenever possible. Arms were sent from London by
Savarkar when he settled there in 19012. He sent a number of pistols to
India with Mirza Abbas, Sikandar Hayat and several others. Mr. Parker of the
Scotland Yard stated in the course of his deposition in the Nasik Conspiracy
Case that hundreds of such pistols were purchased by Indians in England. A
member of the society P.N. Bapat was sent to Paris to learn the art of bomb-
making from Russian revolutionaries. He worked along with Hem Chandra Das
and Mirza Abbas who were also there for the same purpose. They secured a
copy of a Russian book on the method of preparing bombs, and this bomb-
manual was translated in English. Cyclostyle copies of this translation were
brought to India and many were trained in bomb-making.
In addition to Abhinava Bharata many other secret societies sprang
up in different parts of Maharashtra early in the twentieth century. Most of them
worked independently of, and even unknown to, one another, though the
aims, objects and methods were more or less the same. The Abhinava
Bharata came in direct contact with a large number of such independent
secret societies working on parallel lines at Bombay, Poona, Nasik,
Kolhapur, Aundh, Satara, Gwalior, Baroda, Amraoti, Yeotmal, Nagpur and
many other places. In Poona and Nasik, groups were working separately
and unknown to each other. Baroda and Gwalior had not only branches of
Abhinava Bharata, but also other secret societies. Many secret societies
concentrated their main effort on the manufacture of bombs.

12.5. REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN PUNJAB

As early as 1904 a few young men of Saharanpur formed a secret
society and took a solemn oath to lay down their lives in the struggle for the
independence of the country. They were soon joined by Lala Hardayal, Ajit
Singh and Sufi Ambaprasad. The Swadeshi movement gave a great impetus to
them and they kept a close contact with the Bengal revolutionaries. As usual,
arrangements were made for collecting arms, manufacturing bombs, and the
wide distribution of revolutionary publications. There was a lack of revolutionary
activities on account of the repressive measures of the Government, including
the deportation of Lala Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh. But the revolutionary activities
flared up again in 1909 after the return of Hardayal from abroad in 1908. After
Hardayal again left India, the work was carried on by Rash Behari Bose. It was
this group who arranged to throw a bomb at Lord Hardinge in Delhi, at the

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Durbar of the first visit of George V, the King–Emperor of India, at Delhi on 12
December 1911.
During the First World War, a small colony of old Wahabis –
Mujahidins – in the independent territory across the North-West Frontier
Province, cherished the old idea of carrying on Jihad against the British.
They took part in various border wars. When Turkey entered in the war
against Britain in 1914, it caused anti-British feeling among Indian Muslims.
In February 1915, fifteen young Muslim students from Lahore and several
from Peshawar and Kohat joined the Mujahidins and later moved to Kabul.
Such revolutionary sentiments were not confined to Punjab. In January
1917, it was discovered that a party of eight Muhammadans had joined the
Mujahidins from the districts of Rangpur and Dacca in Eastern Bengal. In
March 1917, two Bengali Muhammadans were arrested in the North-West
Frontier Province with Rs 8,000 in their possession which they were
conveying to the Mujahidin colony. These two men had, for some time, been
themselves Mujahidin and had been sent down to their native district to
collect subscriptions. These instances were part of Muslim conspiracy in India
against the British. The leader of this movement was Maulvi Obeidulla of the
Muslim religious school at Deoband (Shaharanpur District, U.P.) and he was
assisted by Maulana Mahmud Hasan, the head Maulvi of the school. They
conceived the project of destroying British rule in India by means of an
attack on the North-West Frontier, synchronizing with a Muslim rebellion in
India. With this object in view, Obeidulla got into touch with the Mujahidins and
left secretly for Kabul where he met the other revolutionaries from India. They
were interned, and some Indian revolutionaries, who were on trial in India but
had escaped to Afghanistan, were put in chains. But they were all released at
the request of Mahendra Pratap, who led a mission to Kabul. Shortly after
Obeidulla left for Kabul, Maulana Mahmud Hasan, accompanied by Mian Ansari
and a few others, left for Arabia.
There they got into communication with Ghalib Pasha, then Turkish
military Governor and obtained from him a declaration of Jihad against the
British. Mian Ansari proceeded with this document – known as Ghalibnama – to
Kabul, distributing copies of it on his way both in India and among the frontier
tribes. By the time Ansari reached Kabul the Indian revolutionaries had been
favourably received by the Amir of Kabul and had established a Provincial
Government with Obeidullah as Home Minister. Encouraged by his success,
Obeidulla wrote a long letter to Mahmud Hasan urging him to secure the active
co-operation of the Turkish Government and of the Sheriff of Mecca and
describing the scheme of a pan-Islamic army – the Army of God – with
headquarters at Medina and subordinate commands at Constantinople, Tehran
and Kabul. There were other letters describing the progress of revolutionary

198
activities in Kabul. These letters were dated 9 July 1916, and were addressed to
an agent in Sindh with instructions to forward by a reliable messenger or convey
them in person, to Mahmud Hasan. They were carried to India by a family
servant of two students – two brothers – who had left Lahore and gone to Kabul.
The letters were written neatly in Persian on lengths of yellow silk and sewn up
inside the lining of his coat. The servant met the father of the two boys with their
news, but the old man’s suspicions had been roused, he extorted a confession
from the servant and got possession of the silk-letters. These he handed over to
the British authorities who got ‘valuable information as to the sympathisers in
India’, interned about a dozen persons and took other necessary preventive
measures. Thus ended the silk letters conspiracy.
Babbar Akalis movement culminated against the treatment meted
out to the peaceful agitation of Akalis by the British Government and
also as a rejection of the ideology of peaceful movement adopted by the
Gurdwara reform leadership. In fact, the Nankana Sahib massacre and the
atrocities at Tarn Taran became the basis of its appearance. The more
radical section of the Akalis did not approve of the non-violent methodology
of struggle and formed a separate organization called the Babbar Akalis to
meet the British challenge. The BabbarAkalis held its meeting at Hoshiarpur
on 10 March 1921. It was attended by Master Mota Singh, Kishan Singh
‘Barring’, Amar Singh of Delhi, Amar Singh Kote, Bela Singh and many
others. It was decided to raise an open armed revolt against the British and
to physically eliminate the toadies. Kishan Singh, a dismissed Hawaldar
Major, organized a band of people which terrorized oppressive government
servants. Their intention was to communicate the message of revolt to the
people as well as the army. Treacherous politics however assisted the
British in securing the arrest of Kishan Singh on 26 January 1923. Enraged
at this, the Babbars committed a series of political assassinations. They
created a tremendous stir in the districts of Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur. In
response, the police rounded up many innocent people. To save them, the
Babbars announced the names of their comrades who have committed the
murders. Many Babbars were killed in police encounters. Out of 186 Babbar
prisoners, 5 were sentenced to death, 11 life imprisonment and 38 to various
terms of imprisonment.
Though the Babbar movement could not hold out any longer,
nevertheless it consolidated the Ghadar mode of armed revolution against
repressive foreign rule and also provided a backdrop for the arrival of
another armed revolutionary struggle led by Bhagat Singh, a nephew of
Sardar Ajit Singh and ardent admirer of Kartar Singh Sarabha. Further, it
must be mentioned that the prominent Babbar leaders were Master Mota
Singh, Bhai Kishan Singh, Amar Singh Granthi of village Kot Barred Khan,
Chattar Singh, Shanker Singh of Pandori Bibi district Hoshiarpur, Amar
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Singh Delhi, Bijla Singh Patiala, Gurbachan Singh Village Ambala District
Hoshiarpur, Vatan Singh Chativind, Tota Singh Pishori, Ganda Singh, Bela
Singh, Karam Singh Jhingar, and Babu Santa Singh. In the adjoining areas,
Jalandhar Bhai Kishan Singh and Master Mota Singh were making efforts
among people to raise an armed struggle. Karm Singh Jhingar, Master Dalip
Singh, Gosal and Atma Singh Bika in the areas around Banga; Karam Singh
Daulatpur and Assa Singh Bhukruddi, in the areas of Nawanshahar; Dharam
Singh, Baba Dalip Singh Sahdra and Jathedar Udam Singh of Kaulgarh
around Balachaur; Labh Singh, Karam Singh, Hoshiarpur; GianiKartar
Singh Goundpur, Harbans Singh of ChhotaSarhala, Hari Singh Khanda,
Jarnail Moola Singh Bahowal, Arjan Singh SachKharaudi and many other
in Mahalpur areas; Thakur Singh Bharta and Rattan Singh Sighriwala in
Hoshiarpur areas; Balwant Singh Dukhia in Haryana; Piara Singh, Banta
Singh, Babu Dalip Singh, ChhotaDalip Singh (DalipaBhujhangi) and Sadhu
Singh Sahandhra etc. in the area of Sham Chorasi. Maximum number of
persons from Ramgarh and PandariNijharan joined in the Chakarvarti Jatha
including ChhotaKartar Singh, Hukam Singh, Amar Singh, Milkha Singh,
Sadha Singh, Nirvair Singh, Udham Singh, Thakur Singh, Harnam Singh,
Kartar Singh, Buta Singh, Mehanga Singh and Bakhshish Singh.
Therefore, these villages became centers of Babbars. Besides Hazara
Singh Madneran, Joginder Singh Khurdpur, Shiv Singh Haripur, Karam
Singh Manko, Nand Singh Gharial, Ujjagar Singh Basrampur, Bhan Singh,
Labh Singh and Basant Singh of Randhawa Mansandan and Chhajja Singh
Massanian and Amar Singh of Rajowal are worth mentioning. Similarly, in
Kapurthala State ‘Bada’ and ‘Chhota’ Kartar Singh, Surjan Singh Dumeli,
Shiv Singh Bameli, Dalip Singh Mankan, Chanda Singh, Darbara Singh,
Moola Singh Palahi and Subedar Amar Singh Dhaliwal were actively
participating. The Babbars were of the view that by attacking the British both
by the frontal attack and the army revolt on the patron of the rebellion of
1857; they could expel British from the country.
The BabbarAkalis for the mobilization of their support adopted
various methods for propagating their objectives: through ‘Diwans’ and
meetings in the rural and urban areas, through publication of the newspaper
Babbar Akali Doabaand by preaching in the army of the local regiments.
They were to apprise the public about the wrong policies of the British in the
Diwans at different places in which Bhai Kishan Singh, Mota Singh, Karam
Singh Jhinger, Karam Singh Daulatpur, Assa Singh and some others
delivered lectures. Through Babbar Akali Doaba they propagated their
objectives and programs. With the establishment of Chakarvarti Jathaits
leaders began to deliver lectures in different congregations. Bhai Kishan
Singh was an expert speaker who was able to raise the spirit through his

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lectures. He delivered his first revolutionary lecture at Gurdwara Mastuana,
New Sangrur in Jind State. Principal Teja Singh was also present during this
lecture. In the doaba area at village Palahi, another such Diwan was
arranged in which he openly raised the sword. The BabbarAkalis continued
with the organization of such Diwans’ in which people were coming in
triumphant to hear their views. Such Diwans were held at Haripur and
Bhubiana in Kapurthala state. At village Rurka where a big Akali conference
was being held, Bhai Karam Singh Jhingar addressed thousands of people
assembled there. Here the police arrested him.
In February 1922, Bhai Kishan Singh and his companions delivered
lectures at the conference held at village Ghurial. Here Bhai Sunder Singh
Babbar and Milkha Singh Nijhar recited bold and fiery poems and Bhai
Kishan Singh in his address asked the people to protest the visit of the
Prince of Wales by black flags. Here a large congregation was present along
with Sant Attar Singh Mastuana. Under the leadership of Bhai Kishan Singh,
the Chakarvarti Jatha in Phagwara tehsil of Kapurthala state organized
many Diwans in the villages of Lakhpur, SahniSusirha, Narurh, Pachhta,
Palahi,Manak, Sangatpur, Hardaspur, Maherh etc. In the beginning of March
1922, a conference was organized at village Khurdpur; when the Congress
leaders C. R. Das, Swami Satdev and Hansraj Jalandhari finished their
lectures; Bhai Kishan Singh along with his companions reached there, Bhai
Sahib addressed around 2000 people.
During the Hola-Mohalla at Anandpur Sahib in 1922, the excitement
of the people was at the peak to listen the views of Bhai Kishan Singh. They
were so much impressed by his views and his personality that when the
police began to arrest him, the people surrounded Bhai Sahib and the Police
Inspector along with his policemen were compelled to go back. After the
Anandpur incident, another famous Diwanwas held in the village Buhani in
which apart from Bhai Kishan Singh, Sant Kartar Singh, GianiKartar Singh of
village Gondapur, GianiHarbans Singh, ChhotaSarhala, Babu Santa Singh
and Bhan Singh were also present. Here Bhai Kishan Singh and Master
Mota Singh delivered rebellious speeches. Another Diwan at village
Sanghwal near Adampur district Jalandhar was held. The village was
known for the centre of Ghadar revolutionaries where Santa Singh and
Rur Singh of this village were hanged in 1916 in the Central Jail, Lahore.
But during the Akali movement this village was surrounded by the villager’s
British loyalists who had declared that they would not allow to organize
Diwans of the Chakarvarti Jatha in the village. The Babbars dared their
challenge and held a Diwan. It impressed the people and diluted British
hegemony. The leaders of Chakarvarti Jatha were continuously delivering
their lectures in the different places in Doaba region. Bhai Kishan Singh
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dispensed 328 speeches in one year. At the same time Bhai Karam Singh
Daulatpur made another effort in the propaganda strategy when he
published the first issue of Babbar Akali Doaba on 22 August 1922. It was
published in the Safri press and 300 copies were printed by the name of this
newspaper ‘Babbar’ was affixed to the name of Karam Singh and gradually
the activities of the ‘Chakarvarti Jatha’ came to be known as Babbar Akali
Movement’. In the first issue of the Babbar Akali Doaba, Karam Singh
Babbar and Kishan Singh Gargaj included only the poems. But they made
hard efforts for the next issues to include some essays. Bhai Kishan Singh
was a good scholar who also contributed for the growth of the newspaper. At
the same time, he made special efforts to distribute the Babbar Akali Doaba
to the maximum number of people. At Amritsar, the Babbar leaders Bhai
Kishan Singh, Karam Singh Jhingar, Dalip Singh Gosal, Ude Singh
Ramgarh and Assa Singh met Jathedar Teja Singh ‘Bhuchhar’ and after
handing him over copies of Babbar Akali Doaba requested him to distribute
among his known people in order to spread the movement in whole of
Punjab. It may be mentioned that Jathedar Teja Singh was editor of the
Gargaj. Advocate Ram Singh Dharowal and S.S. Charan Singh of Jathedar
newspaper also promised to provide full cooperation to the Babbars.
After the leadership of Kishan Singh, the Babbar Akali Doaba began
to publish regularly every month. Its special issues were also produced like
Baisakhi and Maghi issues. This paper was distributed in the villages of the
doaba region along with the cities of Jalandhar, Kapurthala and Amritsar.
The demand for newspaper was so strong that people began to read it in
smaller groups because of shortage of the issue. It must be noted that
Karam Singh was deeply impressed by the Ghadar Party newspaper
Ghadar De Goonj. As in the Ghadar De Goonj along with seditious poetry,
rebellious prose was also included. Similarly, the Ghadar De Goonj was
published in Canada/America and was distributed in Punjab and to other
countries; Babbar Akali Doaba though was published in doaba areas but
was made available in the whole of Punjab. Further it may be noted that the
Babbar Akali Doaba newspaper was being published by Uddaru Press and
the place of publication was given as Jungle though was printed in some
undisclosed locality. The newspaper was rebellious in character and it
challenged the common people and the army to rise against British through
open rebellion. The paper was distributed by hand and personally to the
sympathizers in the villages and among the soldiers in Jalandhar
cantonment secretively. It was published in Punjabi. During these days very
few people could read Punjabi language as Urdu and English were common.
Only a few used to read in the smaller groups of people in the villages. The
newspaper was also distributed among school students. Also, the movement

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though was at its zenith during 1921-1925 but the Babbars remained active
after 1925 till 1941 when they participated in other anti- imperial activities
under the name Jug Paltaoo.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. Who were BabbarAkalis?

b. Mention newspapers started by the BabbarAkalis?

c. What were the main objectives of the BabbarAkalis?

d. Who was Master Mota Singh?

e. Write few sentences onGhadar De Goonj?

12.6. REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN OTHER COUNTRIES

Indian revolutionaries realized the importance of setting up centres in foreign

countries. In addition to securing foreign help, it gave them the additional
advantage of carrying on their activities without any fear from the British
police. One of the earliest instances is furnished by Shyamji Krishnavarma
who settled in London in 1897. He established six lectureships of Rs. 1000
each for qualified Indians visiting foreign countries and another Indian
revolutionary in Paris, Sardar Singh Rana, also offered three travelling
fellowships of Rs. 2000 each. By these means Shyamji gathered round
him a group of Indian revolutionaries, the most prominent among whom
were Savarkar, Hardayal and Madan Lal Dhingra. The centre of their
activities was the ‘India House’ of Shyamji in London. On 18 February 1905,
he founded the Indian Home Rule Society with the object of securing Home
Rule for India by carrying on propaganda in the United Kingdom by all
practical means. For this purpose he started a paper called the
IndianSociologist. It stressed the absolute freedom from British control as
the political goal of India. It laid the greatest stress on passive resistance
and non-cooperation in an extreme form which meant a complete
dissociation from Englishmen as the chief means to force the British to quit
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India. But he did not rule out violence nor underestimate its value as a
method for securing the freedom of India. The British newspapers and
politicians were alarmed at the activities of this group of Indians and held a
meeting under an ex-Governor of Bombay to adopt means ‘to socialize’ the
revolutionary Indian element. The growing revolutionary attitude of Shyamji
also drew the attention of the British Government, and TheTimes and
other newspapers in London attacked Shyamji and his associates, Shyamji
thereupon left London and settled in Paris, and the political leadership of the
India House fell upon Savarkar. His colleague Madan Lal Dhingra, shot dead
Curzon Wyille on 1 July 1909, at a gathering at the Imperial Institute in London.
Madan made a statement to the effect that “He shed English blood intentionally
and of purpose as an humble protest against the inhuman transportation and
hanging of Indian youths”. He was hanged, Savarkar was arrested and sent to
India to take his trial in the Nasik Conspiracy Case and other charges. His
attempt to escape through the porthole of the ship at Marseilles failed, and he
was sentenced to transportation for life. The activities of India House, London,
thus came to an end. A political associate of Shyamji was Madam Bhikhaji
Rustam K.R. Cama. She left India in 1902 and was engaged since then in
making revolutionary propaganda against British rule in India, both in Europe
and America. She and Sardar Singh Rana, lived in Paris and attended the
International Socialist Congress which met at Stuttgart in August 1907, as
representatives of India. She moved a resolution strongly denouncing British
rule in India. It was disallowed on technical grounds, but Madam Cama made a
fiery speech exposing the disastrous results of the British rule in India and at
its conclusion, unfolded the national flag of India – a tricolour flag in green,
yellow and red.
Apart from other revolutionaries abroad, Punjabi Ghadarites abroad
also made an attempt to overthrow the British rule from India through armed
uprising in the country. The Ghadar movement was launched by the
immigrant Punjabis who went to countries like America and Canada in
search of employment and job opportunities. The economic condition of
India under the colonial yoke had restrained scope of livelihood in India and
Punjabis in large numbers migrated to different countries. They, however,
faced humiliation and inhuman treatment in the hand of foreign
governments. The British government paid no heed to their plight. It created
disillusionment among Punjabis regarding the British government to whom
they had remained loyal. Ghadar was a response against the exploitation of
the Indians and it sought to channelize armed attack to uproot the British
rule from Indian soil. The Ghadar movement was organized by Punjabi
immigrant of North America. At the beginning of the 20th century, Punjab
saw a massive economic and political unrest as the colonial policies created

204
unemployment and landlessness among the peasantry. Commercialization,
hiked revenue demand, famine, epidemics in Punjab forced the Punjabis to
immigrate. The British recruitment of Punjabis in the army also made them
mobile. The government sent them to various countries under the British
Empire to fight. The Punjabis were also hired as personal workers to look
after the properties and homes in foreign countries. Trade opportunity and
education in America and Canada was another reason for immigration.
Hordes of people from Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Ferozepur and Amritsar
migrated to foreign countries to try their luck. The Punjabis in large numbers
migrated to Canada where they were offered employment in both industrial
and agriculture sectors. The Canadian employer hired them eagerly as the
Punjabis were ready to work even on the lower wages. It also encouraged
competition among the native workers and sometimes the later resented the
Punjabi immigration. The native work force disliked Punjabi immigration. A
general feeling of hatred was already there against the blacks and Asians
but now it was alleviated to serious racial contempt. As a result the Canada
government tightened the immigration laws and diverted the immigration
towards USA.
In 1913, total of 5000 Indians were recorded as immigrant in America.
The racial slur humiliated the Indian in America as well and increased
awareness among them regarding their own slavery. As Lala Lajpat Rai
once commented that Indians were perceived with three prejudices in
America which were: colour, race and religious prejudice. Soon Indians found
that their slave status was the biggest prejudice in the mind of Americans.
The verbal abuses they went through in the hand of Americans on the
account of India’s slavery inspired them to work towards freeing India from
the clutches of colonial rule. The American ideology of democracy and self-
sufficiency also influenced the educated Indians and they began to
organize themselves in various associations and organizations. Before the
formation of the Ghadar party, several educated people were publishing
revolutionary literature and organizing like-minded Indians into various
organizations and associations. In 1906-07, a pamphlet called Circular-i-
Azadi was being published by Taraknath and Ram Nath Puri to inspire
Indians to stop using British goods and boycott government jobs in
favour Indian Swadeshi movement. Pamphlet like ‘MaroFarngi Ko Maro’,
and ‘Bhai Band’ helped in creating awareness about the racial discrimination
faced by the Indians in America and Canada. In California Indian activists’
Bhai Jawala Singh, Santokh Singh, and Hazara Singh took land on lease
and offered work and help to jobless Indian immigrants and soon it became
a well-known place among the Indians. Since 90 percent of immigrants were
Sikhs, they were first to organize themselves in different associations. In

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1907, Khalsa Diwan society was formed in Vancouver. Jawala Singh and his
subordinates established Pacific Coast Khalsa Diwan Society and
established Gurudwaras in Stockton; these Gurudawaras became places
for gathering of Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus. The youth among the
immigrants who were students and related to revolutionary activities sped up
the momentum of agitation among the Indians abroad. Tarak Math was a
Bengali youth who published Free Hindustan from Vancouver and Seattle.
By 1911, the rising discrimination and racial abuse forced the Indians to take
steps to make the British government aware of the treatment meted upon
them. In 1911, an earlier association called Hindustan Association was
renamed into United Indian League with Hussain Rahim as its president.
The League published a paper called Hindustan and Sansar from England.
The League joined hands with Vancouver Khalsa Diwan society and their
political activities. From 1911 onwards, the Indian immigrants got involved
in a struggle against the Canadian authority when the latter refused to
grant permission to immigrants to bring their families to Canada. The
Indians protested on the behalf of the fact that they were loyal citizens of
British Empire and immigration laws should be the same for everyone. The
indifference of British government to the whole issue agitated Indians further
and all associations in foreign countries joined hands to protest against this
discrimination.
In 1912, Lala Hardayal reached San Francisco and joined the university
as the Professor of Indian philosophy. He soon resigned from his job and
joined the revolutionaries. He gave lectures on atheism and gained popularity
within a few months. Various associations working in different parts of America
met in Portland and formed Pacific Coast Hindi Association and Sohan Singh
Bhakna was elected its President. Sohan Singh Bhakna then sent the invitation
for Lala Hardayal who agreed to join the party and proposed to publish a weekly
paper called Ghadarin Urdu and in Punjabi. The paper became popular and its
writing became revolutionary and radical. As a result, the party was also known
by the name Ghadar. The party organized meetings and called for the Indians
to fight against the British imperialism. Its headquarters was established at San
Francisco and named Yugantar Ashram. On 21 April 1913, all branches of
Pacific Coast Hindi Association were clubbed in one central organization, Hindi
Association of Pacific Coast. Sohan Singh Bhakna was its President and Lala
Hardayal was chosen as its Secretary. They continued the publication of paper
Ghadar and soon were known as Hindustan Ghadar party. In various other
countries like Panama, Argentina, Afghanistan, Japan, Brazil, Manila, Shanghai,
Italy, France, Canada, Germany, South Africa, Ethiopia, Hong Kong and
Singapore, they opened their offices to coordinate all the Indians settled abroad.
The party rose to success on the account of its paper Ghadar as it was

206
published from all the foreign branches. The paper inspired the mushrooming of
various revolutionary organizations. Its radical and agitated ideology created stir
among the Indians. It inspired the Indians and the soldiers in British army to
rise to an armed protest against the British rule. The copies of Ghadar were
sent to Punjab and its members became heroes. People sang songs written
by Kartar Singh Sarabha and others. Government banned the entry of the
paper but with little success. In the short span of a year, Ghadar became a
household name. More and more joined the Ghadar movement and added
to its activities as well as the finance, and made a base among students and
soldiers.
a) Kamagatamaru Incident 1914: Though the famous incident was
not in any direct relation with the Ghadar movement but it helped the
Ghadarites to speed up their activities and launch a full-fledged campaign
against imperialism. A Japanese ship was hired by Baba Gurdit Singh. It
was carrying 376 Punjabis (mostly Sikhs) to Vancouver in Canada. The ship
was hired to help Punjabi immigrants reach Canada. The Canadian
Government had refused to let the Indian enter their territory. For two
months the ship stayed in Canada but its passengers were not allowed to
disembark. The Canadian Indians were not allowed to help the passengers.
The Ghadar activists tried to help the Kamagatamaru passengers but
Canada government was rigid in its stance and forced the ship to leave its
territory and sail back to India. As soon as the ship reached Calcutta on 29
September 1914, the British government sent a gunboat and placed its
passengers under guard. They believed that these passengers were law
breakers and were involved with the banned revolutionary activities. In a
verbal brawl at Budge Budge with the British police, the passengers reacted
and were fired at and several people got injured and some died. 211 people
were arrested though their leader Gurdit Singh managed to give police a
slip.
b) Action Plan of Ghadar Party: The incident is considered landmark in
revolutionary history as it exposed the racial discrimination meted upon
Indians by the foreign governments. People of India were shocked to know
how the British government dealt with it and added to the plight of already
suffering passengers. The incident was also used by the Ghadar party to
recruit more people against colonial rule. The party also devised plans to
make an organized armed rebellion against the British government. The
Ghadar party began its movement to stir revolution in India and called its
members to reach India and create a support base among the native people.
It’s important leaders including Sohan Singh Bhakna, Harnam, Kartar Singh
Sarabha, Barakatulla and others reached India. Government sources reports
that at least six to eight thousand Ghadarites returned to India but were

207
restrained in their movements. The response of the native people was
extremely disheartening for the Ghadar leaders as they were termed crazy by the
local people of Punjab. Even the political situation was not favourable as Congress and
other political parties were helping the British rule in the First World War. But the
Ghadarites did not lose hope and worked on their agenda to kill government officials
and express their thoughts through the publication of revolutionary literature.
Leading revolutionaries of Bengal and other parts helped the
Ghadarites. Ras Behari Bose and Sachin Sanyal came to Punjab to help
the movement. It was decided that on 21 Feb 1915, an organized revolt
would be launched from various parts of the country to topple the British
government. The government took severest action to stop them with the help
of informers within the party. All-important party members were captured and
arrested. With all the leaders arrested, the armed rebellion of the Ghadar
party failed. Most of its leaders were persecuted and sentenced to
imprisonment. The Ghadarites were always accepted as true revolutionaries
by subsequent movements. However, they failed to incite the similar kind of
response within contemporary society. In fact, the native support to the
Ghadarites was disheartening in Punjab. They were perhaps respected but
not followed. The Ghadar movement was, however, a modern revolutionary
movement as it was structured on social, economic and psychological ideas
instead of abstract ideas. Lala Hardayal in the Ghadar paper raised many
questions which were relevant to the lives of the people. Their ideas were
related to thousands of immigrants. The racial slur and discrimination was
their everyday life and it created disillusionment and awareness among
them. They could see the difference between the advance progress of
countries like America and Canada and backwardness of India. Scholars
believed that the Ghadar movement became popular among the immigrant
Sikhs as they could convince them that their loyalty to the British were
misplaced and it was not the American or the Canadian who were exploiting
them but the British government which had refused to own its own citizens.
The Ghadar was not only a revolutionary movement but it was an
intellectually motivated movement as well. Though its members were mostly
Sikhs yet the movement was totally secular in its outlook and working.
Nevertheless, they extensively employed Sikhs symbols to stir the bravery in
the people. They took recourse to the sayings of the Gurus but interpreted
the same into the modern idea of bravery and nationalism completely
avoiding the religious overtone.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. Who were Ghadarites?

208
b. What were the problems of Indians migrants in the USA and
Canada which motivated them to organise political association to
demand equal rights?

c. What was the Kamagatamaru incident?

d. Mention the main leaders of the Ghadar Movement?

e. Who was Baba Gurdit Singh?

12.7. SUMMARY
Students, in this lesson we have dealt with revolutionary movements in the
country since 1905 particularly in Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab. You have
also seen how revolutionaries organised themselves outside the country, what
was their strategy and how their actions were backed by an ideology. The
revolutionaries were moving away from the idea of individual heroic action
to the idea of mass based armed struggle within the country as well as outside
the country. It made a major contribution to the ongoing national struggle
against colonialism. The courage, sacrifice and patriotism of the revolutionary
terrorists inspired the Indian youth and restored their pride and self- confidence.

12.8. REFERENCES
Bipan Chandra Pal, et al., India’s Struggle for Independence, 1857-1947,
New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1988.
Sumit Sarkar, ModernIndia1885-1947, Delhi: Pearsons Education India, 2014.
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Nationalist Movement in India: A Reader, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009.
T.R. Sareen, IndianRevolutionaryMovementAbroad1905-20,New Delhi:
Sterling, 1979.

12.9. FURTHER READINGS

209
Ashok Kumar Patnaik, TheSovietsandtheIndianRevolutionaryMovement,
1917- 1929, New Delhi: Anamika Prakashan, 1992.
Bipin Chandra, IndianNationalMovement: The Long Term Dynamics, New
Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 2010.
Hem Chandra Kanungo, Account of Revolutionary Movement in Bengal, India:
SetuPrakashani, 2015.
Manmath Nath Gupta, History of the Indian Revolutionary Movement, India:
Somaiya Publications, 1972.

12.10. MODEL QUESTIONS

1. Discuss the role of revolutionaries since 1905 in Indian National Movement.
2. Write a detailed note on the Ghadar Movement.
3. Explain the role of Babbar Akali’s in Indian National Movement. Exp
4. lain the revolutionary movement in Bengal.

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LESSON 13
LEFT WING POLITICS AND YOUTH
ORGANIZATIONS
Structure
13.0. Objectives

211
13.1. Introduction
13.2. Emergence of Socialist and Left ideas in India
13.3. Left Wing Politics 1922-34
13.4. National Front 1934-39
13.5. Left Wing Politics 1939-47
13.6. Youth Organization: Naujawan Bharat Sabha
13.7. Hindustan Socialist Republican Association
13.8. Summary
13.9. References
13.10. Further Readings
13.11. Model Questions

13.0. OBJECTIVES
Students, after reading this lesson you will be able to:
 understand the emergence of Socialist and Left ideas in India.
 gain knowledge about the role of M.N. Roy in the establishment of
Communist Party of India.
 analyse the role of socialists and other Left forces in Indian National
Movement.
 know about the anti-imperialist and anti-communal struggle for
freedom.
 know about the development and growth of youth organizations in the
country.

13.1. INTRODUCTION
Students, this lesson will examine the emergence of socialist and Left
ideas in the country. During the freedom struggle, Left ideology and
programmes changed the course of Indian National Movement. It was the
result of several internal and external influences working in the minds of the
young men. This lesson will examine the development of youth organisation
in the country. Naujawan Bharat Sabha and Hindustan Socialist Republic
Association played an active role in creating an upsurge and awareness
among the youth.

13.2. EMERGENCE OF SOCIALIST AND LEFT IDEAS IN INDIA

The nationalists' concern with India’s poverty was the main reason
which provided a fertile ground for socialist ideas in India. In their critique
of British rule, the leaders of the Indian National Congress had made the
Indian peoples poverty a central issue. From 1876, Dadabhai Naoroji, wrote
paper, memoranda and pamphlets statistically presenting the state of misery
and tracing its causes to the tribute rendered to Britain, to the
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deindustrialization generated by free trade, and to over-taxation and current
manipulations by the British regime. Naoroji’s writings were assembled and
published in 1901 through Swan Sonnenchein and Co., London, who were
incidentally also the publishers of the Engels edited translations of Marx’s
Capital, London, 18813. In 1901, Romesh Dutt also published his Economic
History of India Under Early British Rule, followed (1903) by its companion
volume, The Economic History of India in the Victorian Age, the whole work
constituting the narration of the processes of Britain’s exploitation of India.
How massive the nationalist literature was on India’s impoverishment by the
beginning of the twentieth century can be judged from Bipan Chandra’s very
comprehensive study of it. Simplified versions of the nationalist perceptions
of British exploitation were widely circulated: one good example is offered by
Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj written in 1909. It is true that the nationalists trained
their guns mainly on British rulers, and were largely silent on the travails of
labour in the Indian owned factories and on peasants oppressed by the
increasing rent extraction by land- owners. Yet, once poverty of the masses
was made a criterion for identifying the oppressor, it was inevitable that the
Indian capitalists and land-owners could soon be so identified. The early
peasant mobilisation by Gandhi in 1917-18 in Champaran and Kheda, were
carefully selected in which the Indian land- owners were not involved. But
the Ahmedabad textile workers’ agitation of 1918 brought Gandhi in
confrontation with his own supporters, the cotton mill-owners. Clearly, the
barriers would go down further if the masses were approached to support
the National Movement in order to alleviate their own misery. It cannot
entirely be an accident that the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movement
(1920-22) was accompanied by scattered, but determined, mass actions
against the Zamindars on an unprecedented scale: the peasant agitation
in Darbhanga, Bihar (1920), the anti-Talukdar peasants riots in Awadh, U.P.
(1921-1922) and the Moplah (Mappila) uprising in Malabar, Kerala(1921).
Working class aspirations too found expression, through a moderate, in the
formation of the All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) in 1921, attended
by practically all the principal nationalist leaders, except Gandhi.
The new awareness of the necessity of bringing workers and peasants
into the nationalist movement was stressed by C.R. Das’s presidential address
to the Gaya session of the Congress (1922), and his address to the AITUC
the same year, where he spoke of Swaraj for the 98 percent. Gandhi, on his
release from prison in 1924, sufficiently shifted to egalitarianism to demand
optional universal suffrage; he now also claimed to be a socialist in so far as
he advocated state ownership of such machine industry as might be
permitted in the idyllic India of his vision. In 1925, he gave space in his
Young India to M.N. Roy, unmindful of British official indignation. Despite
Gandhi’s opposition, a resolution for condolence on the death of Lenin was
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lost in the AICC by just 63 votes to 54.
The vote indicated the growth of sympathy for socialism and Soviet
Russia in the ranks of the radical sections of the National Movement. From
1923 onwards Jawaharlal Nehru’s espousal of Independence, replacing the
vague concept of Swaraj or Home Rule drew him to the Communists; and by
1927 his participation in the Communist-led Congress of Oppressed
Nationalities at Brussels led to his accepting a position in the newly founded
League against Imperialism; and he also visited Soviet Russia. At the close
of this year, along with Subhas Chandra Bose, he sponsored a
successful resolution at the Madras Congress demanding complete
Independence; and in 1928 both of them helped to found the Independence
for Indian League. In 1934-35, Nehru wrote of his having “long been drawn
to socialism and communism”, and spoke of how “Marxism lighted up many
a dark corner of my mind”. He was obviously speaking of his experience of
the late 1920’s. A similar inclination towards socialism was found among the
revolutionaries. Already in March 1926, Bhagat Singh’s attachment to
socialism was clear when he founded the Naujawan Bharat Sabha; and in
1928 when revolutionary groups from all over the country met at Delhi under
the leadership of Chandrashekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh, they
rechristened their organisation as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army.
These trends must be regarded as having genuine socialist elements
within them, and many of M.N. Roy’s criticisms of these groups during this
period, often sharply expressed, must be regarded as the products of a far
too demanding attitude towards those who by Lenin’s definition, were
basically bourgeois democrats. Yet it was initially from their ranks that the
founders of the Communists movement within the country came.

Self -Assessment Questions

a. Who was M.N. Roy?

b. Mention the works published by Romesh Dutt?

c. When was the All-India Trade Union Congress formed?

d. Mention about Gandhi's early experiments before the beginning of the

Non-Cooperation Movement?

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13.3. Left Wing Politics 1922-34
By 1922, the Communists ideas were spread by Muzaffar Ahmad in
Calcutta, S.A. Dange in Bombay, M. SingaraveluChettiar in Madras and
Ghulam Hussain in Lahore. The formation of the Swaraj Party undoubtedly
suggested the notion of a Left-wing party within the National Movement. In
1922, Dange floated the idea of an ‘Indian Socialist Labour Party of the Indian
National Congress’; the next year Chettiar published a manifesto of the Labour
and Kisan Party of Hindustan. In April 1923, Ghulam Hussain, editor of
Inquilab, Lahore, proposed a conference at Lucknow to form a Labour
Peasant Party of India. But before these efforts could bear fruit, British
Government arrested the leading Communists and arrayed them in the
Cawnpore Bolshevik Conspiracy Case. In May 1924, Muzaffar Ahmad,
Shaukat Usmani, Dange and Nalini Gupta were sentenced to four years
rigorous imprisonment. Chettiar was exempted from trial only owing to ill-
health. These heavy punishments, as those of the Peshawar cases, drew no
perceptible protest from the rest of the nationalist camp- a curious attitude of
indifference to civil liberty, if not the cause of national freedom. This fact is
one among many which present-day critics of subsequent Communist hostility
to moderate nationalism tend entirely to ignore. In spite of the Cawnpore
Conspiracy Case, two developments took place, which were to strengthen Left
elements considerably. One was the conference of Indian Communists at
Cawnpore (Kanpur) itself, held openly in December 1925 at the invitation of a
local national Communist, Satyabhakta. The conference elected M.
Singaravelu as President and Janaki Prasad Bagerhatta, a member of the
AICC, as General Secretary, and put Muzaffar Ahmad (released from prison
owing to serious illness), S.Y. Ghate and others on its executive committee.
The defiantly open attempt to organize the conference was matched by the
resolution of solidarity with thirteen named Communist victims of the Peshawar
and Cawnpore cases. The Communist Party was, perhaps, the first political party
of any significance to exclude persons belonging to communal organizations
from its ranks.
The second important development was the formation of a broader-
based Left-oriented party in Bengal just preceding the Communist conference
at Cawnpore in November 1925: this was ‘the Labour Swaraj Party of the
Indian National Congress’, which in 1926 was renamed the ‘Peasants and
Workers Party of Bengal’. Its initial inspiration came from Left
Swarajistslike Hemantakumar Sarkar and the revolutionary poet Nazrul Islam;
Muzaffar Ahmad worked as the editor of its organ Langal. The party called for
‘complete independence of India, based on economic and social
emancipation’, and, while popularizing Communist ideas, the Langal was
especially stout-hearted in expressing solidarity with Subhas Chandra Bose
incarcerated in Mandalay jail since 1924. It also took up issues of peasant
rights, and began organizing workers. With it as the model, the Bombay

215
Workers and Peasants Party was founded in January 1927, and, with similar
parties formed in U.P. and the Punjab, and All-India Workers and Peasants
Party was constituted in December 19214. A universal feature of these
parties was the participation in all levels of Congressmen, along with
Communists. The new Party’s strength were shown on 30 December 1928,
when about 20,000 industrial workers marched on the Congress Pandal at
Calcutta demanding that the Congress, then in session, should pass a
resolution for complete independence, and reject the goal of Dominion Status
adopted in the Motilal Nehru report. They were welcomed and addressed by
Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru also had presided on 27 December at a Socialist
Youth Congress at which Communism was declared ‘the (only) way out’.
Ground was thus clearly being laid for cooperation between the
radical nationalist elements and the Communists when the British
Government, anxiously watching the growth of this cooperation, struck. On
20 March 1929, thirty-one persons, including practically all important
Communists and Left – inclined trade union leaders, were arrested in
different parts of the country and brought to Meerut to stand trial, for entering
‘into a conspiracy to deprive the King of England of the sovereignty of British
India’. Two more were added later to be arrested and tried. Three of the
Meerut accused were British Communists, including Ben Bradley. The trial
dragged on till January 1933, when harsh judgments were pronounced:
Muzaffar Ahmad received transportation for life; five, including Dange and
Spratt, 12 years; Bradley, Mirajkar and Usmani, 10 years; the remaining
seventeen, 4 to 7 years. The heavy sentences were reduced on appeal in
August 1933; but even by the end of 1933, Ahmad, Dange, Spratt and
Usmani were still in prison. On 23 July 1934, the British Government
declared the Communist Party and all its organizations unlawful, and their
membership a criminal offense.
The Meerut Conspiracy Case deprived the Indian Communist
movement of its leadership for full four years (1929-33) and more. It
occurred on the eve of the Congress launching its Civil Disobedience
Movement immediately after its Lahore Session at the end of December
1930, a session made further memorable by Nehru’s open espousal of
socialism in his presidential address. While, by the Meerut trial, the British
Government succeeded in neutralizing Communists and breaking up the
Communist-led Workers and Peasants Party, the more radical national
elements were won over by the Congress leadership through its new mass
movement. Under constant repression, the Communists could not even
restore a centralized leadership; the Bombay and Calcutta Communists
functioned separately, and in 1932 even the Bombay group split up. M.N.
Roy’s return in late 1930 and his attempt to form a rival Communist Party

216
further destabilized the Communist ranks. Immediately after the 1929
arrests, Motilal Nehru had chaired, and Jawaharlal Nehru had joined, a
committee for the defence of the Meerut accused; but the Congress
enthusiasm on their behalf soon waned, especially after the Delhi Statement
of 2 November 1929 issued in praise of Lord Irwin and signed by Gandhi,
the two Nehrus and other Congress leaders. Neither Bhagat Singh and his
comrades (soon to face death sentences) nor the Meerut accused
specifically figured in Gandhi’s Eleven Points, that were declared to be the
basis of civil disobedience in 1930; nor were the two groups of prisoners
brought within the ambit of the Gandhi- Irwin agreement of 4 March 1931.
Under the circumstances, the new position taken by the Comintern
after its sixth Congress at Moscow, closing on 1 September 1928, could not but
find ready response from the embittered ranks of Indian Communists. In line
with the rather sectarian assessments of that Congress in general, the
Comintern now held Indian ‘bourgeois nationalism’ to have ‘already betrayed
the agrarian revolution’ and to be ‘likely to play a counter-revolutionary role’
in future. The first task of the Indian Communists was to form a strong
Communist Party, and the second to ‘unfold the agrarian revolution’ under its
leadership, thereby breaking the alliance of ‘the imperialists, landlords and the
compromising bourgeoisie’. It followed from this that any political alliance
with the Congress was not to be thought of. Nor was the Workers and
Peasants Party (WPP), a ‘dual’-class party of a type expressly endorsed by
Stalin. In 1925, now thought deserving of so much attention as has been
paid to it by the Communists at the cost of building their own party. The
later advice was easy to follow, since, with the jailing of the Communist
leaders at Meerut, the WPP could hardly function and practically died a
natural death. As for the warnings about trusting the Congress, these two
fell on receptive ears among Indian Communists. The Delhi Statement of
the Congress leader of 2 November 1929, which tormented Jawaharlal
Nehru’s conscience, and the termination of the Civil Disobedience
Movement in ‘a whimper’, in Nehru’s own description, drew much scorn.
When Gandhi addressed a ‘labour meeting’ at Parel, Bombay, on
16 March 1931 to explain his agreement with Irwin, Communist hecklers
taunted him for forgetting the Meerut accused, his own eleven Points and
‘the substance of independence’. In their defence statements the Meerut
accused strongly criticized Gandhi's subsequent participation in the Second
Round Table Conference in London in 1931 and his compromising stance
there. The bitterness went so far that in Calcutta in 1934, the Communists
helped to organize ‘League against Gandhism’.
The Civil Disobedience Movement, in so far as it brought large
masses into the National Movement for the first time, quickened the germination

217
of socialist and Left ideas within the Congress, at the same time as the
concessions and compromises occurred on the part of national leadership.
Nehru held in 1934-35 that some people in the Congress, and they are a
growing number, want to change the land system, and the capitalist system,
though they cannot speak in the name of Congress. The claim was not
baseless. Nehru had himself done much to further the spread of socialist
ideas; and at the Karachi Congress in March 1931, he drafted and Gandhi
introduced a Resolution on Fundamental Rights which promised substantial rent
and debt reduction, and the state’s control of key industries and ownership of
mineral resources, along with promises of such ‘bourgeois-democratic rights’ as
universal suffrage, equality for women and abolition of caste disabilities. It was
elaborated and made into a full-scale programme by AICC in August 1931. By
and large, it could serve as a minimum programme for the Left as well. In
July 1931, Jaya Prakash Narayan helped found the Socialist Party, whose
counterparts were established in other provinces in the next few years,
mainly by those working in the Congress. These groups coalesced into an All-
India Congress Socialist Party (CSP) in 1934, its members ranging from
avowed Marxists like Narayan and Narendra Dev to supporters of the British
Labour Party like Minoo Masani. They were drawn initially to M.N. Roy, who
having returned from his exile after his expulsion from the Comintern, was
arguing that Communists should work within the Congress, and by doing so,
bring about a change in its leadership. The significant growth in the influence
of the CSP within the Congress was another sign that there was
considerable potential for the acceptance of socialist ideas in its ranks;
and this could not but help bring about a change in the Communists attitude
towards the Congress.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. What do you understand by the term ‘Capitalism’?

b. Name three Communist leaders of India?

c. Who was the editor of Inquilab?

d. Write a few sentences on the Meerut Conspiracy Case?

218
e. Explain the phrase ‘League against Gandhism’?

f. Who founded Socialist Party?

13.4. National Front 1934-39

From 1929 Meerut arrests onwards the Communists were faced with a
persecution in which there was hardly any let-up until 1933. Just being a
Communist was itself an act of ‘civil disobedience’, though it may not have
been ever so called. Despite their formal disavowal of the Gandhi-led Civil
Disobedience as being far too limited and passive, a number of Communists
such as S.G. Sardesai went to jail as Satyagrahis; and other Communists
such as Bankim Mukherji, Abdur Razzaq Khan and Moni Singh received
severely heavy sentences for agitational activities against the Government. The
Communists’ position in the trade unions was weak and not only by
repression but also by the economic crisis of 1929-32 and growing
unemployment which made working-class response to strike calls increasingly
tepid. The Moderates split away from the AITUC in 1929 (with Nehru supporting
the communist position); and in the rump AITUC there was another split in
1931, with Communists now seceding to form the Red TUC.
In such circumstances, the exhortations made to the Indian
Communists in the Three Parties (Chinese, British, German) letter of 1932
and the Chinese Party's letter of 1933, to build their Party and take the lead
in powerful and anti-imperialist actions, independently and on their own,
were surely unrealistic. But the letters did recommend a greater resort to the
united-front strategy and re-unification of the trade unions. To this extent
they were certainly a helpful factor in the Communist Party's partial recovery.
The situation began to change with 1933, when most of the Meerut prisoners
were released, following reductions of their sentences on appeal. The
fragmented groups were reunited, and a provincial Central Committee of the
Communist Party formed. By late 1934 much revival had taken place, and
the Party’s work in trade unions was spreading; contacts had been made too
with the newly formed Congress Socialist Party (CSP), within which some
Communists (like Ajoy Ghosh and P. Sundarayya) had begun to work. The
controversy with the followers of M.N. Roy (himself the victim of a harsh
sentence given out at Cawnpore, and in prison till 1936) no longer prevented
common action with the Royists in the trade unions, leading, in 1935, to the
return of the Communists to the AITUC. All these were creditable
219
achievements made in the face of the Government’s ban imposed on the
Communist Party and its organizations in July 1934, and of regular cycles of
imprisonment to which Communists remained subject to.
The Seventh Congress of the Comintern met in August 1935 at
Moscow. Recognising the emergence of fascism as a world-wide phenomenon
of extreme danger, especially after Hitler's rise to power in Germany in 1933, G.
Dimitrov, in his report to the Congress, called for an extensive people's united
front, which was to include Social Democrats and other anti-fascist forces. As a
corollary to this, Wang Ming, in his report on the colonial countries at the same
Congress, asked Indian Communists not to disregard work within the National
Congress, in effect treating the Congress as a genuine part of the anti-
imperialist united front. The specific implications were worked out in an
important article ‘The Anti-Imperialist People’s Front in India’ by R. Palme
Dutt and Ben Bradley of the British Communist Party, which came to be known
as the Dutt-Bradley theses (February 1936). The theses contained the following
propositions: (1)The most broad-based unity was desirable on the basis of
(a) a line of consistent struggle against imperialism and (b) struggle for the vital
needs of the toiling masses. (2) The Congress was the principal existing mass
organisation of many diverse elements seeking national liberation. (3) Several
previous actions of the Congress leadership had been disastrous and
equivalent to surrender to imperialism. (4) There was thus need to criticize the
Congress leadership, but only with the purpose of assisting the Congress to
play is true role and not to weaken the unity of the elements already in the
Congress. (5) The Congress at the potential ‘by the further transformation of its
organisation and programme’ to ‘become the form of realization of the Anti-
Imperialist People's Front’. (6) Mass organizations of workers and peasants, of
youth, etc., should be developed and their affiliation to the Congress striven for.
(7) Democratization of the Congress (e.g. elected Working Committee) should
be demanded. (8) A minimum programme should be presented to the
Congress, based on complete independence, civil liberty (including right to
strike), repeal of repressive laws, release of political prisoners, protection of
rights of workers (including 8-hours a day), 50 per cent reduction for peasants
and security from seizure of their lands by landlords and moneylenders. (9) The
question of whether ‘Non-violence’ should be a requisite dogma for the
Congress should be raised, but the issue should not be allowed to split the
national front. (10) There should be a consolidation of the Left-wing comprising
Congress Socialists, Trade Unionists, Communists and Left Congressmen, in
which the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) can play an especially important
part.
(11) The Left Wing should try to have a number of its candidates run in the
ensuing elections (under the Act of 1935), while preventing a splitting of the

220
National Front votes in the elections. (12) The slogan of a Constituent
Assembly to make free India’s own constitution was to be presented as a
central slogan.
The Dutt-Bradley theses were rapidly accepted by the Indian
Communists, and began to bear fruit almost immediately. Already under the
influence of the Seventh Comintern Congress, the CSP National Executive,
meeting at Meerut in January 1936, had decided to withdraw its earlier
formal ban on Communists entry into the CSP, originally imposed in 1934,
and henceforward were allowed to seek admission to CSP on an individual
basis. Communists there upon began to enter the CSP from April 1936
onwards; and this gave them effectual entry into the Congress as well.
When the Congress met for its general session in Lucknow in April
1936, once again under the president ship of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Left was
able to make its presence felt in a significant manner. Nehru spoke of
Socialism, of the need for ‘ending private property except in a restricted
sense’, and of ‘the new civilization’ represented by the resurgent Soviet
Union. Though the Left-sponsored resolutions for affiliation of mass
organizations, rejection of ministerial office after elections under the 1935
Act and a proportionally elected Working Committee were rejected, the votes
in favour were respectable in number. Nehru included three CSP leaders in
the Working Committee (including J.P. Narayan) for the first time.
Simultaneously, the All-India Kisan Congress (afterwards, Sabha) and the
Progressive Writers’ Association were founded at conferences held in
Lucknow about the same time. In both these organizations, the
Communists rapidly became the main force, rallying peasants and writers
behind the National Movement, while also expanding ideological influence.
The Royists and Communists in the AITUC achieved conciliation with the
right-wing National TU Federation, though the expected merger at the
Nagpur session of AITUC in 1936 did not take place; it came two years later.
The spurt in the mass-hold of the Left that followed is indicated by the
expansion in the membership of the All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) and the
rising tide of the strike movement. By the time of its Congress at Camilla
(Bengal) in May 1938, the membership of the All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS)
had crossed half a million; by its Gaya Congress in April 1939, it had
reached 8,00,000. In 1938, the AIKS adopted the red flag for its banner. As
for the working days lost through industrial disputes, an index of militant
trade union strength, these had fallen to below 1 million in 1935, but now
climbed to 2.4 million in 1936, almost 9 million in 1937 and above 9 million in
19314. When the Congress ministries took office in eight out of eleven
provinces in 1937, the ban on the Communist Party ceased in practice to
be implemented, and this too helped the Communists to expand their areas
221
of influence.
The growth in the mass influence of the Left found its reflection in the
increasing strength of the Left within the Congress, especially the AICC. When
the Congress began preparing for the 1937 elections, the election manifesto
endorsed at the Faizpur Congress (December 1936) was based on the Karachi
Resolution and had a manifestly Left orientation. In 1939, there were twenty
avowed Communists in the AICC within the much larger CSP contingent of
AICC members. Communist influence within the CSP was on the rise as well,
with E.M.S. Namboodiripad and Sajjad Zaheer becoming joint secretaries of the
CSP. The greatest triumph of the Left was the re-election of Subhas Chandra
Bose as Congress President early in 1939. Subhas Chandra Bose had been a
radical Congress leader who had for long suffered for his views. His earlier
fascination with fascism now seemed to be a past chapter, and, succeeding
Nehru as President of the Congress in 1938, he continued the Left-leaning
policy of his predecessor. In January 1939, he decided to seek re-election,
and, confronting Gandhi’s own candidate Sitaramayya, won by 1,580 votes
to 1,375. Newspapers proclaimed it a victory of the Left, and it may be
regarded as the high tide of its influence in the Congress.
The triumph proved to be short-lived, however, as early as 1934 Gandhi
had declared socialist ideas to be ‘distasteful’ to him; and though he admitted
the socialists had a right to be represented in the Congress, he declared it
unacceptable that they should ‘gain ascendancy’ there. As the Left grew
within the Congress, Gandhi’s sympathies with the right-wing became more
open, though he took care to nurse his relationship with Nehru, who, to many
appeared to be the leading figure on the Left side. When the Congress opted for
elections and ministries the work of choosing candidates and controlling
ministries was left to a parliamentary board with Vallabhbhai Patel as Chairman,
and Azad and Rajendra Prasad as the other members- a purely right-wing
body. There were few Leftists chosen as candidates and the support to even
a single AITUC candidate (K.N. Joglekar) was refused, leading to Dange’s
resignation from the Congress. Once the Congress ministries were formed, the
CSP refused to join them, with the result that Congress ministries were
mainly dominated by representatives of the right-wing.
Once the ministries began to function, the tension between them and
the Left-led mass organizations, notably the Kisan Sabha and the AITUC,
became increasingly sharper. The crisis came in Bihar: the famous peasant
leader Sahajanand resigned from the working committee of Bihar PCC to
free himself for leading peasants’ struggles against a government that was
so openly supportive of the landlords. Even Nehru joined Gandhi and the
Right in expressing suspicion that the KisanSabhas were undermining the
Congress organization. In September 1938, Gandhi proposed a ‘purge’ of

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the Congress, clearly aimed at the Left; and the Delhi AICC during the same
month asked Congress ministries to act strongly against those who pursued
‘class war by violent means’. About the same time, acting under the
influence of the mill- owners, the Bombay government introduced the
Bombay Industrial Disputes Bill against which the trade unions unitedly
organized a general strike on 7 November 19314. Those conflicts led to
increasingly sore relations between the Left and the Right, which enabled
Subhas Chandra Bose to mobilize support for his electoral victory ahead
of the Tripuri session of the Congress (March 1939). But the Communists
as well as the Socialists were not prepared for a total break with the Right,
for such a break would have meant the end of the National Front. Thus,
when the Right moved a resolution at Tripuri to bind Bose to the ‘wishes’
of Gandhi, the CSP and the Communists tried to avoid a split by not
opposing the resolution. Subhas Chandra Bose, faced with non- cooperation
from both Gandhi and Nehru, resigned. Thereafter he and his followers,
organized in the Forward Bloc, were isolated (despite a short-lived Left
Coordination Committee consisting of the Forward Bloc, Royists, CSP and
communists), and were hounded out of the Congress on disciplinary
grounds after July 1939.
Under the pressure of the Right, the unity of the Left began to break
still further. M.N. Roy could have justifiably maintained that his argument for
working through the Congress had in part anticipated the ‘tactical line’
approved at the 7th Congress of the Comintern but he now shifted
increasingly to the Right, asking his followers to resign from CSP in 1937
and opposing the Kisan Sabha. After witnessing the fate of Bose’s followers,
the CSP leadership became afraid of suffering a similar fate, and began a
purge of the Communists after Masani, Lohia and others pressed the issue
in May 1939. By May next year, the Communists had been expelled; but the
result was a loss of very large CSP membership, the CSPs in Andhra (led
by P. Sundarayya and Rajeswara Rao) and Kerala (led by E.M.S
Namboodiripad and A.K. Gopalan) practically turned into provincial units of
the Communist Party. The Communists gained control of the leadership of
the major mass organizations, the AITUC, AIKS and the All-India Students
Federation, hitherto regarded as being under CSP influence. Though the
Communist Party now emerged as the major force among all the groups of
the Left, the anti-imperialist ‘national front’ was certainly gravely weakened
by the dissensions. And these dissensions, we must remember, came
clearly from the Right’s firm resolve to risk everything in order to stem the
rising influence of the radical forces.

Self -Assessment Questions

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a. Who was S.G. Sardesai?

b. In which year the Karachi Congress was held?

c. What do you know about Dutt-Bradley theses?

d. Write a few sentences on All-India Kisan Sabha?

e. Who was Vallabhbhai Patel?

f. What do you know about Seventh Comintern Congress?

13.5. Left Wing Politics 1939-47

When World War II broke out on 3 September 1939, opinion in the Indian
National Movement was divided: on the one side was the antipathy to the British
as masters of India on the other, hostility to the Nazis as upholders of
everything offensive to human dignity. The Congress Ministries were directed by
the party’s high command to resign, because the British Government had made
India a belligerent country without consulting the representatives of the Indian
people. Direct rule was thereupon proclaimed in the Congress-ruled provinces.
The Congress nevertheless offered to cooperate with the British government in
its pursuit of war, if some substantive concessions were given. These offers
were met by vague promises as in the Viceroy’s statement of 17 October 1939
and in his ‘August Offer’ of 8 August 1940. Such responses fortified the view
that the empire was what the war was about, and concessions would not,
therefore, be made at its cost. The Congress leadership was compelled to begin
‘an individual civil disobedience campaign’ under Gandhi’s leadership from
October 1940. The government replied by large-scale arrests; and by May 1941
some 20,000 Satyagrahis were in prison.
The Communist Party, in line with the Comintern positions, treated the
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war as an ‘inter-imperialist’ war, having been preceded by the Munich
conspiracy (1938) and the Soviet response thereto through its Non-Aggression
Pact with Germany (1939). This being so, it was essential that the ‘National
Front’ policy should be continued in the interest of opposing ‘one’s own’
imperialist power. A restoration of the old Left unity was no longer possible
because of the increasing anti-Soviet stance of the CSP leadership. With
Subhas Chandra Bose some relations continued to be maintained, and there
is evidence that individual Communists were involved in his escape from
India to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1940. At the same time, with the
imposition of direct British rule after the exit of the Congress ministries, the
Communists became subject to the 1934 ban, and their hide-and-seek with
arrests and imprisonments began once again. By May 1941 almost the entire
Communist leadership was in jail, along with a very large number of the
Party’s 5,000 membership. The result of all this was, as the General
Secretary of the Party, P.C. Joshi was to note in 1942, that though “the
National Front remained intact… it did not move forward”. There could be doubt,
too, whether it was really ‘intact’, except from the side of the Communists.
Nazi Germany launched its attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941.
This brought a change in the complexion of the war; but unlike other Communist
parties, the Indian Communist leadership, most of it in prison, found it difficult to
turn away from the long established position of hostility to British imperialism,
and to begin to treat it as an ally in a world-wide coalition. There were naturally
overtures from the British Communist Party for a change in Communist policy,
an article from R.P. Dutt, ‘A Policy for the Indian People’, appearing in October
1941. At last, Communist leaders held in the Deoli camp prepared their ‘Jail
Document’ in December, in which they argued forcefully for a change of policy
to one of ‘People’s War’. The entry of Japan in the war in the same month and
its quick successes in South-East Asia brought India closer to the theatres of
war, and made the shift of policy still more urgent. There was already a similar
shift in position in the Congress leadership. The British Government was
compelled to release the principal Congress leaders in December 1941, where
after they met at Bardoli to pass a resolution noting ‘the new world situation
which has arisen in the war and its approach to India’, and offering to join the
Allies (United Nations) on behalf of ‘a free and independent India’. The
resolution, ratified by the Congress, prepared the ground for the Cripps Mission
which offered dominion status, with power to secede from the empire, a
Constituent Assembly, self-determination for provinces, minority protection- but
all after the war. For the moment the transfer would be withheld. The
negotiations with the Congress broke down on the last issue.
It was from this point that the Congress leadership, without expressly
reneging from their animosity to Germany and Japan, shifted to a policy of

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confrontation with the British Government, leading to the ‘Quit-India’ resolution
of the AICC (8 August 1942). The Communists’ opposition to the resolution
secured only 13 votes in the AICC. Their case rested on the pre- eminent
need to defeat the Axis powers, and thus invoked the call of
internationalism. Jawaharlal Nehru admitted that in Gandhi’s pressing on for
a new movement against British authority, ‘nationalism had triumphed over
internationalism’. It seems that with the Germans seemingly poised to break
through the Soviet defences on the Volga, and the British Empire menaced
on the borders of Egypt by Germany and on India’s eastern frontier by the
Japanese, Gandhiji felt that the British, as part of a seriously endangered
coalition, could soon be compelled to come to terms with the Congress. The
resolution itself stated that the Congress was “anxious not to embarrass in
any way the defence of China and Russia”; and Nehru tells us that both
Gandhi and Azad (as President) in their final speeches stressed “a desire for
settlement” and contemplated negotiations, rather than immediate action. It
was the British Government that precipitated matters by carrying out large-
scale arrests and then violently suppressing spontaneous protests against
the arrests. In an ironical twist to events, the Red Army’s historic victory at
Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43 freed the British Government from any
anxiety over the safety of its Empire and so giving in to any Indian demands
under the pressures of war. This ruled out any immediate gains coming to
India out of the Quit-India Movement. The Communists’ opposition to the
Quit- India resolution was made the reason for their post-war expulsion
(1945) from the Congress, and the issue has been raised at various times
since then to question their patriotism; but there is no doubt that, if one
concedes that the defeat of Fascism was the primary need of the world at
that hour, then the position the Communists adopted was unexceptionable.
The Communist Party’s position, after its legalization on 22 July
1942 (for which there had to be negotiations with the British Government)
and the passage of the Quit-India resolution left it the only Party out of the
old National Front which was not facing repression. Its position with regard
to the British Government, while not confrontationist, was independent. It
never relented on its demand for the release of Congress prisoners and
formation of a national government. The Party’s central committee’s
resolution of 19 September 1942 demanded that the British Government
should agree: to stop this [post-Quit India] offensive of repression against
the people and the Congress, to release Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress
leaders, to lift the ban on the Congress and to open negotiations for the
establishment of Provisional National Government. The Communists
strongly rejected a proposal by Amery, the British Secretary of State for
India, for a coalition of non-Congress parties. The Communists thus

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opposed both the Congress’s decision to go in for non-cooperation and the
British Government’s provocative policy of repression.
These were political positions; in practice the Communists avoided
open cooperation with British officialdom, built up trade unions and Kisan
Sabha organizations, and fought in a restrained manner for the people’s
day- to-day demands and reliefs. In the situation they became practically the
sole legal spokesmen for the common man. While a ‘no-strike’ policy was
declared, campaigns were organized against hoarders and for proper food
distribution; and ‘grow more food’ campaigns, appealing directly to peasants,
were also attempted. Relief activities were organized, the most important
being those during the Bengal Famine of 1943-44. Mass work of this nature,
combined with a large circulation of Marxist literature (the ban against it
having been removed), resulted in a very considerable growth of the
Communist Party. In June 1945, a secret official report estimated the Party’s
membership at 30,000 (up from 5,000 in 1942) and its trade union following
at a quarter of a million. It now published ten weekly journals, and its main
organ, People’s War, had a circulation of 25,000 to 30,000 copies. The
same report notes increasing Communist influence among students; and, it
might have added, peasants.
These gains had to be set by the side of the Party’s isolation from
practically all the segments that had comprised the ‘National Front’ of the late
1930s. The bulk of the Congress was estranged by the refusal of the
Communists to follow, in Nehru’s words, “the national forces in whatever they
are doing”, i.e. the Quit-India movement. Particularly bitter were the relations
with the erstwhile Left allies, the CSP, whom the Communists now regarded as
‘saboteurs’ for harming the cause of people’s war by their resort to violence
against the British authority, and the ‘Forward Bloc’, whose workers were
deemed potential ‘traitors’ for their support of Subhas Chandra Bose, now trying
to assemble the INA in collaboration with Japan.
As for M.N. Roy, regarded as a ‘renegade’ even in the best of times,
he fulfilled expectations by moving over entirely to the British side. Such
isolation impending even before the Quit-India resolution inspired a new
version of the National Front; this was to be a Congress-Muslim League
alliance, in friendly cooperation with the Communist Party. The first
important statement of the new position came in an article, ‘National Unity
Now’, published in People’s War on the very day of the Quit-India
resolution. We should remember that the Communist position on the
communal problem up till now had been practically indistinguishable from
that of the Congress Left. As early as 1928, the Communist-led Workers
and Peasants Party, while accepting ‘the solution proposed to the communal
question’ by the All-parties Report (rejected by M.A. Jinnah), had argued that

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the question hardly merited ‘such excessive amount of attention’, since
‘experience tends to show that there is little communal feeling among the
masses’. Alternatively, it was thought communalism would wither away as the
people’s economic demands were achieved through common struggles.
The Muslim League was not considered a suitable party in which
Communists should work: Hasrat Mohani had been expelled for that reason.
In 1937-38 the Communists were active in the Muslim Mass Contact
Campaign of the Congress, which immediately provoked bitter opposition
from the Muslim League. It was now argued by Adhikari that conditions had
changed. Ever since the Muslim League’s campaign against the alleged ill-
treatment of Muslims under the Congress ministries, the League’s influence
among Muslims had grown enormously; and with the Lahore resolution of
1940, which became the basis for the Pakistan demand, the League had
made Partition a necessary element of any further constitutional
development acceptable to it. With due encouragement from, and
collaboration with, the British Government (which, for example, made
minority League ministries possible in NWFP and Assam), the League was
meeting little organized ideological or political opposition from the Congress,
whose leadership, at all levels, remained incarcerated for the larger part of
the war period. Clearly, once the League had grown in strength, there had to
be negotiations with it: and to this extent, Communist proposals that the
Congress and League leaderships should come together, and certain
concessions be given to the League as a party, were unexceptionable. This
was a position which the Congress in fact adopted from the Gandhi-Jinnah
talks of 1944 onwards.
But Adhikari’s article and subsequent CPI policy statements went much
further than this. It was held that the Muslim League had undergone a
transformation: since 1938 it had become the spokesman of the ‘anti- imperialist
sentiment’ of the Muslim petty-bourgeois masses; and the League leadership
had been transformed from a ‘feudal reactionary’ to an ‘industrial bourgeois
leadership’, playing an ‘oppositional role vis-a-vis imperialism’. In effect,
therefore, the class character and anti-imperialist credentials of the League were
equated with those of the Congress. The two parties were asked to come
together in a new ‘national unity’. For such unity the previous Congress
programme of freedom of religious worship and protection of minorities was
insufficient. The Congress must agree to the right of self-determination; it
was ‘just and right’ in the Pakistan demand that ‘nationalities’, such as those
of Sindhis, Baluchis, Pathans and Punjabi Muslims, should have the right to
secede.
In a further report (September 1942), Adhikari invoked the Marxist-
Leninist positions on national self-determination, especially quoting Stalin’s

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1925 reference to the ‘scores of hitherto unknown nationalities, having their
own separate languages and separate cultures, will appear on the scene’ in
India ‘in the event of a revolutionary upheaval’. This was now to be often
quoted in justification of the Pakistan demand, though the fact that Stalin had
never contemplated a religious nationality arising out of a linguistic one (e.g.,
Punjabi Muslim, or Bengali Muslim) was simply glossed over. This
theoretical position (‘the Adhikari thesis’), which was confirmed in
comparatively cautious language by the political resolution of CPI’s first
congress in May 1943, had immediate practical implications. Communists
(i.e. such as were Muslims) were now to work in the League, as they had
done in Congress. They were expected to spread progressive ideas in the
League ranks; and in June 1945, Z.A. Ahmad, perhaps on this basis, was
assuring Jawaharlal Nehru of ‘the rapidity with which popular forces are
growing in the League’. How the ‘nationality’ fig- leaf could slip is shown by
the fact that in the 1946 elections the Communist Party decided to support
‘the League against all rivals, i.e. including Congress’ in ‘all those Muslim
seats’ in which the CPI’s own candidates were not contesting, irrespective of
whether the seats were in the areas of the so-called ‘Muslim nationalities’ of
the North-West or anywhere else in India. Everywhere, therefore the
Communists and their supporters would be divided among Muslims and
non-Muslims. Such a situation was disastrous for the growth of progressive
ideas among Muslims; and in fact a number of Communists and progressive
people working in the League at the Party’s behest were now permanently
lost to the Communist movement. It was, perhaps, merely a logical
extension of the Adhikari thesis that in December 1945, the Party released a
scheme for a ‘Sikh homeland’, thus further dividing the Punjab into three
nationalities. Fortunately, this was a much briefer aberration than the pursuit
of Pakistan.
Communists must shift from the strategy of people’s war back to the
strategy of anti-imperialist struggle at the end of World War II. In December
1945, the CPI Central Committee described “the post-war period in India” as
“the period of unprecedented opportunity to make the final bid for power”.
The moral and material strength of imperialism had greatly suffered owing to
the successes of the Red Army, the detachment of East European states
from the imperialist system, the strength of the People’s Liberation Army
in China, the armed struggle for independence in South-East Asia and, not
the least, a great erosion of the grip of imperialism on the popular mind
in the metropolitan countries. There was, therefore, every justification for
showing a greater degree of militancy in the fight against British rule in
India. Since there was now a return to the established Marxist view that
the landlords and princes were inextricably linked with the imperialism and

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the bourgeoisie was prone to compromises, i.e. ‘an alliance between British
big business and their Indian brothers’ was thought to be impending, the
national agitations could be accompanied by economic struggles of workers
and peasants (the period of ‘no strike’ being declared to be over). In the
role of the Communists was emphasized by speaking of the United
National Front of this phase as that of ‘Congress-League-Communist Unity’
instead of just ‘Congress-League Unity’. The Communist Party showed its
mettle considerably in the agitation over the INA trials. Putting aside its
opposition to the INA during the People’s War period, it treated INA men as
fighters for freedom in line with general national sentiment. Students’ strikes
were combined with industrial strikes in February 1946. Almost
simultaneously came the RIN Mutiny (18-23 February) at Bombay;
Congress, League and Communist flags went up on the naval ships and
establishments. An industrial strike called by the
Communists in sympathy with the ratings paralysed Bombay;
and hundreds were killed in clashes with the British troops and police.
These events have an indelible place in the annals of the National
Movement, since they helped immeasurably to bring independence closer.
The Communistled economic struggles were also intensified. The
Tebhaga Movement in Bengal, initiated in 1944 to reduce rent to a third of
the produce, spread to many parts of Bengal during the subsequent three
years. In 1944-46 there were strikes by the tribal Warlis in Maharashtra
against forced labour, high rents and usury. A sharper political character was
assumed by the coir and other workers’ movement in Travancore-Cochin: in
a state-wide strike in October 1946, army firing claimed lives of hundreds of
the volunteers, now known from the two places concerned as the Punnapra-
Vayalar martyrs. In July 1946, began the great uprising of the Telangana
peasants against the Nizam and the landlords, which was to continue till
1951, constituting the greatest armed struggle of the peasantry in Indian
history. The Communists also participated in the Quit-Kashmir movement of
Shaikh Abdullah’s National Conference (May 1946).These actions, with some
exceptions (INA agitations and Quit-Kashmir), were entirely under
Communist leadership, unsupported by the Congress or the Muslim
League. The Congress leadership was interested in negotiating for
freedom on the strength of its massive support among the Indian people.
The Muslim League just concentrated on its slogan of Pakistan. The 1946
elections (on restricted franchise) led to a situation in which the Congress
dominated the ‘general’, and the League, the ‘Muslim’ constituencies; the
Communists polled just 2.5 per cent of the vote in the Provincial Assembly
elections. The plans and counter plans that emerged from the Simla
Conference and the Cabinet Mission (1946) made it increasingly difficult for

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the CPI to support the Muslim League’s positions. It became clear that the
League leadership was of the same reactionary hue as before.
This was recognized in an important article, ‘Freedom for India’, by R.P.
Dutt (July 1946), when he described the current League leadership as of ‘big
Muslim land-owners’, this being at total variance from Adhikari’s description
of the same leadership in 1942. The facts on the ground began to demand a
reconsideration of the entire question of Pakistan. R.P. Dutt examined the issue
with his customary thoroughness in the 1947 edition of India Today, and found
no justification for the concept of Pakistan on the basis of any theory of
nationality. He had apparently put these views earlier in Labour Monthly (March
1946), and though initially received with some reserve in the Party, his writings
must have begun to exercise their influence in time, being at least partly
reflected in a Central Committee resolution of August 1946.
The communal riots that preceded and accompanied the Partition
could not demarcate the Congress and League better. Despite the
undoubted growth of communal sentiments in the Congress, which the CPI
constantly pointed out, Gandhi’s valiant fight to protect both Hindus and
Muslims from communal slaughter had no counterpart on the League side.
The Communists had no large mass influence of a similar kind, but their fight
against communalism during this period forms an epic chapter in their
contribution to the National Movement: it has seldom received the
recognition it deserves.
When the Mountbatten Award was announced, the Party’s Central
Committee offered to “fully cooperate with the national leadership [of the Indian
Union] in the proud task of building the Indian Republic on democratic
foundations”. Confronted with the rising communal tide in India and the growing
strength of the right-wing headed by Vallabhbhai Patel, the CPI gave its support
to Nehru, ‘the voice of the people’, and called for a front with him and the
Socialists (October 1947). The next month, alarmed at the deteriorating
situation, the Party offered its cooperation to Nehru again and asked for a
‘progressive reorganization of government’. On Gandhi’s murder on 30
January 1948, the Communists were foremost among the mourners and
firmest in demanding action against the communal forces.
This phase naturally closed as after Independence (15 August 1947) the
Nehru Government stabilized, and the larger issues of struggle against the big
bourgeoisie, landlords and remnants of imperialist control presented
themselves. At the Party’s Calcutta Congress in March 1948, a new radical
line was charted under B.T. Ranadive who had replaced P.C. Joshi as General
Secretary. In a sense this reflected the need to adjust to the new situation,
where the National Movement having mainly fulfilled its objective, a new
policy had to be framed. Thus when independence came, but power went to the

231
propertied classes with much imperialist influence remaining, the Communists
resolved to continue the struggle for attaining the full version of a free India that
the united National Movement had promised to the Indian people. The
continuation of the struggle tended to cloud the memory of the contribution they
had themselves made to achieve national freedom. It is therefore, all the more
necessary to put the record straight, and to recall the sacrifices rendered by
countless members and friends of the Communist movement as part of the
great struggle that ultimately made India free.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. What do you know about Quit-India’ resolution of the AICC?

b. Write a few sentences on the Tebhaga movement in Bengal?

c. Define the term ‘Imperialism’?

d. When Germany launched an attack on the Soviet Union?

13.6. YOUTH ORGANISATION: NAUJAWAN BHARAT SABHA

Naujawan Bharat Sabha was formed in March 1926. It was declared
unlawful by the British in 19213. However, the Sabha was revived in April 1928
by the efforts of the Lahore Communists and the Kirti group. The main objective
of the Naujawan Sabha was the complete independence of the country from
foreign yoke which was possible by mobilizing all the workers, peasants and
other anti-imperial forces, thereby overthrowing British imperialism and its allies
by mass action and establishing a workers and peasant republic in India. Their
first task was to organize labourers and peasants by means of generating
awareness through the newspapers and setting up libraries of socialist literature
in certain villages. The Sabha organized debates on issues related to morality,
literature, social issues, popularizing of Swadeshi products, equality and
protection of India’s different cultures. Although the Naujawan Bharat Sabha
was founded by Bhagat Singh, but it got help and cooperation from Kidar Nath

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Sehgal, Sardool Singh ‘Cavesshar’, Mehta Anand Kishore, Sodhi Pindi Das and
Camrade Ram Chander. In 1926, many meetings of the Sabha were organized
in which the student’s participation was over-whelming. In September 1926, the
members of the Naujawan Sabha like Kidar Nath Sehgal and some other youth
published a pamphlet Appeal to the Youths of Punjab.
In another meeting held on 15 April, it was decided to organize more
meetings to create consciousness on the issues of religion and freedom
among the masses. It was decided to open more branches of the Sabha
with its headquarter at Amritsar and also that the Kirti Kisan group be also
invited to join them. The Sabha opened its branches in Ludhiana,
Jalandhar, Montgomery, Jaran Wala and Gujranwala apart from
Amritsar, Lahore, Morinda, Ambala, Multan, Tala Gang, Sialkot and
Rawalpindi. Among the activities of Naujawan Bharat Sabha was its
participation in the agitation to boycott the Simon Commission in 1928,
Murder of J.P. Saunders, celebration of Kakori Day etc. Naujawan Bharat
Sabha enacted its contacts with the revolutionaries of Bengal, U.P.
Rajasthan and Bihar. In 1924, Sachinder Nath Sanyal, Chander Shekhar
Azad and some others created Hindustan Republican Association. In
1928, the party organized Hindustan Socialist Republican Army. In its
meeting on 8-9 September at Ferozeshah Kotla, it was decided to work
together. The Party also resolved to make bombs, collect money through
dacoities and robberies of the post offices, banks and the government
treasuries. It also adopted the use of terrorist activities. Bhagat Singh and
Batukeshwar Dutt also threw bombs in the Assembly Hall, distributed
pamphlets and raised the slogans of ‘Inqlab-Zindabad’, ‘Samrajvad-
Murdavad’ and ‘Unity of the Labourers’. The government made arrests of the
revolutionaries of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. Some
went underground and worked on the patron of the Ghadar revolutionaries.
These revolutionaries continued their propaganda even in the prisons by
organizing hunger-strikes and meetings with the other revolutionaries in the
jails. The Lahore Conspiracy Case attracted much attention of the country.
Meetings were held in most parts of the country and processions were
organized everywhere. It provided the association a mass base. The
revolutionaries also made use of their Court visits as a propaganda platform,
ultimately, Bhagat Singh and his two colleagues were hanged on 23 March
1931. With the arrests and deaths of the revolutionaries the movement received
a serious setback and ultimately its activities were also affected.
The Naujawan Bharat Sabha was created by the suggestions of
Dr.Satpal Kitchlew. Its active members were Bhagat Singh, Chander
Shekhar Azad, Kailashpati, Rajguru, Yashpal, Sachinder Nath Sanyal, Jai
Gopal, Hans Raj Vohra, Sukhdev, Batukeshwar Dutt, JogeshChander

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Chatterjee, Pandit Kishori Lal, Yatin Das, Sodhi Pindi Das, Gurdit Singh,
Ahmeddeen, DugraBhabi, Hari Kishan and Lal Ram Saran Das, etc. The
Naujawan Bharat Sabha adopted three types of methodology as a part of
strategy to propagate its ideology and programs. First, by holding secret
meetings of the top leadership at different places in Uttar Pradesh,
especially in Meerut, Agra and Kanpur. In Punjab, Lahore and Amritsar were
the major centers of their activities. In these secret meetings, the leadership
decided the action of their programs which were aimed at distribution of
literature in order to generate mass mobilization as well as implementation of
certain militant actions. Secondly, publication of leaflets, pamphlets,
newspapers and books. Thirdly, utilization of certain public places including
the court premises and Assembly Hall. The places of their militant actions
where they either had distributed leaflets and pamphlets and made fiery
speeches as the case of murder of Saunders, throwing of bomb in the
Assembly Hall and using the platform in the court during the trial. Organizing
strikes and observing hunger-strikes by which the revolutionaries wanted to
attract the attention of the media as well as the masses and the common
people for the achievement of their objectives. Fourthly, to propagate the
revolutionary ideas and programs among students, the activists of the
Sabha also attempted to convey their message with the help of the plays,
performed among students especially at the D.A.V. College, Lahore along
with the use of slides with the help of magic lanterns. Through these slides,
they illustrated the lives of those revolutionaries who were either in the
prisons or were in the death cells to be hanged by the British.
The Sabha established a Tract Society for the distribution and
publication of literature of political nature. It published the ‘Wealth of Nations’ by
Har Dayal, ‘India and the Next War’ by AggnisSmidley and ‘Bharat Maan Ka
Darshan’ and ‘Naujwanon Se do Baten’ by Chhabiel Das. These publications
were enriched by revolutionary’s ideas. The Hindustan Naujwan Sabha also
exhorted the youth of India to take inspiration from the freedom struggle of
Ireland, Turkey, Japan, China and also from the Communist and Bolshevik
movements. They also emphasized the youth and the common people to study
and analyze the biographies of the political martyrs, concepts of freedom and
equality, democracy and of referendum.
Other prominent publications of the Sabha included Sanyal’s ‘Bandi
Jeevan’, ‘Why Do We Want Sawraj’ by Har Dyal, ‘Gorian Dian Kartootan’,
and ‘BechareFirangee’ by Chabeel Das, ‘Garibi-Dunian Da Sabh Ton Vadda
Papp’, and ‘Dunian Da Sabh Ton VaddaInsan’. In 1929, the Sabha
published a newspaper Naujwan from Amritsar and the revolutionaries
published their ideas in the form of articles in the Kirti and Partab to bring
revolutionary consciousness among the youths of Punjab. Bhagat Singh
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prepared a Jail Diary when he was in prison. Bhagat Singh wrote an article
The Martyrs ofKakori in the issue of January 1928 of the newspaper Kirti, in
which he gave details about the contributions and sacrifices of Rajinder Nath
Lehiri, Roshan Lal, Ashfaqullah and Ram Prasad Bismil. In November 1928,
Bhagat Singh and his companions brought out special issue of the Chand,
popularly called as the PhansiAank in which they focused on the lives of
Ghadar Party revolutionaries and also the repression of the British during
Jallianwala Bagh massacre and the Kuka Movement. In this special issue,
the revolutionaries emphasized the life in imprisonment, death sentences
and deportations of the previous anti- imperial militant revolutionaries with
the aim to remind and generate political consciousness in the younger
generations.
As has already been mentioned that the Naujawan Bharat Sabha’s
major emphasis was on the propagation of the socialist ideology and to bring
armed revolution for its establishment. Its method of propagation was mainly
through the publication of revolutionary literature in diverse forms in which it
abundantly made use of the history of Punjab and largely history of the
international revolutionary movements and stories of freedom struggle of
different countries and also the revolutionary movements in Russia, China and
the American War of Independence. To begin with, there is mention of the
world-famous revolutionaries like Voltaire’s views in which he has emphasized
the importance of the tracts which are capable of reaching the houses of the
poor peasants and thus to influence the masses. Further the revolutionaries
took care of the statements made by the British administrators in their
justification of British rule which they often claimed during Christian
Missionaries’ public meetings that the British were ruling India for their welfare
only. The revolutionaries were aware of the falsity of such proclamations and
rejected them and stressed upon the real objectives of British imperialism that
was meant for the sheer economic exploitation of the Indians through the
use of power. Further the revolutionaries were not prepared to recognize the
great men of the world to be the personalities who were often accepted as great
including the religious leaders, famous army generals, rich people,
intellectuals and followers of Gandhi, instead they viewed eminent thinkers like
Rousseau, Voltaire, Karl Marx, Engle, etc. who were capable of understanding
human problems and miseries and were in position to provide their solutions.
The Naujawan Bharat Sabha literature drew its arousal from the Ghadar
revolutionaries, and it claimed them as the great patriots. The bravery of the
Ghadar revolutionaries has been compared to the greatest heroes of world
history including the leaders of American Revolution like George Washington;
Beer Walis, the revolutionary of Scotland; Mazzini and Garibaldi of Italy.
Simultaneously Shivaji, the Maratha leader; and the leader of extremist group of

235
Indian National Congress Bal Ganga Dhar Tilak, partition of Bengal 1905,
Swadeshi movement, Alipur conspiracy case 1908; and Sardar Ajit Singh a
revolutionary of 1907 Agrarian agitation of Punjab have been quoted to
inculcate spirit of rebellion against the British. Further the Sabha’s literature
repeatedly made use of the sacrifices of the Ghadar party revolutionaries in
which Dr. Mathura Singh, Sufi Amba Prasad, and Kartar Singh Sarabha found
more space. The revolt of 1857 has been the major attractive force to be
utilized in which the bravery of Tantia Tope, Laxmi Bai, and Moulvi Ahmed Deen
were appreciated for their sacrifices. Similarly, VirSavarakar was lauded for
terming this revolt as the first war of independence. The action of Madan Lal
Dhingra in Britain became a symbol of bravery and sacrifice to the
revolutionaries to whom the Sabha literature mentioned as the ‘first’ rebel of the
Punjab and his behavior during the trial has been given maximum appreciation.
The sacrifice committed by the brave Khushi Ram during the Martial Law in
Punjab became another source of inspiration. The world personalities such as
Mahatma Budh, Tolstoy, and Prince Kropotkin, attracted attention for their
leaving worldly luxuries at the cost of commitment to ideas as compared to
the rich classes in India who had become parasites. The statement of
British thinker Berlin Head that India was conquered by power of the sword and
ruled over by it, the literature emphasized that this claim was proved by the
repressions during Jallianwala Bagh and tragedy at Mananwala near Amritsar.
The mention of these atrocities was aimed at creating mobilization against the
British. The great sacrifices made by Guru Gobind Singh, Shivaji and Hari Singh
Nalwa, were reminded to criticize the attitude of the people who were not
ashamed of facing British humiliations.

Self-Assessment Questions
a.What was the main objective of the Naujawan Sabha?

b. Who founded Naujawan Bharat Sabha?

c. Mention the slogans raised by Bhagat Singh in Assembly Hall?

d. What were the methods followed by Naujawan Bharat Sabha to

propagate its ideology and programs?

e. Name the newspaper published by Naujawan Bharat Sabha?

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13.7. HINDUSTAN SOCIALIST REPUBLICAN ASSOCIATION
An organization namely, Hindustan Republican Association was set up by the
revolutionaries of U.P. and Punjab in 1924. It was renamed in 1928 as the
Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. The reason behind its formation
was the prevailing circumstances within the country and world too. The
Gandhian experiments created frustration among the masses and the impact of
the Bolshevik revolution was being felt more and more and this led to a
widening of horizon among the revolutionary groups. Socialism was attracting
their minds and the ideals of social justice which were in a nebulous form in the
earlier period were turning towards taking a distinct shape. It was not only
the young generation of revolutionaries which was exposed to the new ideas,
but the elders had also started discussing Soviet Revolution and Communism in
1924. The upsurge of the working class after World War I greatly influenced
all of them. They watched this new social force carefully. They could see the
revolutionary potentialities of the new class and desired to harness it in the
nationalist revolution. The Constitution of the Hindustan Republican
Association declared its objective to establish a republic in India by an
organized and armed revolution. The association envisaged that the basic
principle of the republic shall be universal suffrage and the abolition of all
systems which make any kind of exploitation of man by man possible. It was
committed to “the organization of labour and Kisan” as it was necessary for
the successful struggle against capitalism and feudalism. The programme of
the Hindustan Republican Association reveals that its members and
founders had become advanced in their ideas. They were not inspired only
by the Bhagwat Gita, Anandmath, Aurobindo, Vivekanand and the militant
nationalists but also got inspired from the Russian, French and Irish
revolutions. Jogesh Chandra Chatterji, its principal founder, was exposed to
socialist thought in jail during 1916 and 1920.
The Hindustan Republican Association shifted ideologically from a
narrow selfless patriotism to a vague sort of socialism – and even
internationalism. This came out clearly, in its pamphlet entitled ‘The
Revolutionary’ published on 1 January 1925, and which was said to be the
manifesto of the revolutionary party of India. This pamphlet revealed to a
very large public that the revolutionaries were committed to certain lofty
social ideals. The pamphlet ‘The Revolutionary’ began with the words of
Nietzsche that “Chaos is necessary to the birth of a new star” and the birth of
life is accompanied by agony and pain. India is also taking a new birth, and
is passing through that inevitable phase, when chaos, and agony shall play
their destined role, when all calculations shall prove futile, when the wise

237
and might shall be bewildered by the simple and weak, when great empires
shall crumble down, and new nations shall arise and surprise humanity
with the splendor and glory which shall be all its own. The Hindustan
Republican Association, crossing the barriers of narrow nationalism,
proclaimed in its manifesto, “The revolutionary party is not national but
international in the sense that its ultimate object is to bring harmony in
the world by respecting and guaranteeing the diverse pointed interests of
the different nations; it aims not at competition but at co-operation between
the different nations and states”. It acted according to the methods of older
revolutionaries. It also believed in the armed overthrow of the imperialist
government. The manifesto categorically declared that the foreigners “have
no justification to rule over India except the justification of the sword, and
therefore the revolutionary party has taken to the sword”. However, the
advancement made by the Hindustan Republican Association was spelt out
clearly in the next sentence, “But the sword of the revolutionary party bears
ideas at its edge”.
One of the major actions of Hindustan Republican Association was the
Kakori Train Dacoity Case, which is also known as the Kakori Conspiracy Case.
As pointed out above, the Hindustan Republican Association did believe in
armed action against the imperialist government, they planned this dacoity to
generate money, which they desperately needed. On 9 August 1925, a group of
Hindustan Republican Association activists including Ram Prasad Bismil,
Ashfaqullah Khan, Chandrashekhar Azad, Manmathnath Gupta, Rajen Lahiri
and others stopped a train at Kakori near Lucknow and walked away with the
government cash from the guard’s coach. No innocent passenger was harmed.
Within a few months, most of the revolutionaries were arrested and tried in the
famous Kakori Conspiracy Case. Four of them including Bismil and Ashfaqullah
were hanged while others were sentenced for different jail terms.
The late 1920s saw severe economic depression followed by intense
labor upsurge. The Indian working class was increasingly coming under
Bolshevik influence leading to the formation of a number of labour unions with
distinct communist leanings. Besides, there were youth movements in 1928 and
1929, raising the demand for complete independence and radical social and
economic changes. Both Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose
organized the Independence for India League as a pressure group within the
Congress to carry forward the campaign for acceptance of the goals of
complete independence and what the U.P. branch of the League in April
1929 described as a “socialist democratic state in which every person has the
fullest opportunities for development... (with) state control of the means of
production and distribution”. But once again, this left theoretical radicalism of the
Congress could not find adequate expression in concrete action or organization.
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Jawaharlal Nehru, when questioned by Gandhi, went back to the liberal,
bourgeois politics of the Congress, leaving the youth charged but frustrated.
The Hindustan Republican Association was frustrated with the verbal radicalism
of the Congress and was itself rendered weak and powerless after the Kakori
Conspiracy Case. Thus, it decided to rebuild the organization. Most of the
experienced revolutionaries were behind the bars and the rest were
underground to escape arrest.
In these circumstances, the young members of the Hindustan
Republican Association led by Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Shiv Verma,
Chandra Shekhar Azad and Vijay Kumar Sinha, undertook the task of
reorganizing the party. A meeting of the important members was held in
1927 at Kanpur, primarily for this purpose. It was soon followed by another
crucial meeting for the formation of the Central Committee of Hindustan
Republican Association on 8 and 9 September 1928 in the romantic
surroundings of the ruins of the Feroze Shah Kotla at Delhi. This was an
important meeting which was attended by ten participants from U.P., Bihar,
Punjab and Rajasthan. The meeting resulted in the adoption of a
revolutionary programme with an advanced revolutionary socialist outlook
for their organization. Finally, Bhagat Singh and his friends succeeded in
convincing their critics who agreed to rechristen the association by including
socialism as one of the main goals. Thus, the name of the Hindustan
Republican Association was finally changed to Hindustan Socialist
Republican Association. The Hindustan Republican Association aimed at the
establishment of a republic of India where the basic principle would be adult
suffrage, while the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, as
indicated by its name, proclaimed the goal of establishing a socialist
republic. Long before this, Bhagat Singh and his comrades formed
Naujawan Bharat Sabha in Lahore with a distinct goal of establishing a
socialist republic in India. Bhagat Singh was convinced that the salvation of
India lay not merely in political independence but in economic freedom. The
newly formed Hindustan Socialist Republican Association also decided
that the soldiers of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association will
leave their homes, keep no contact with their families and devote full time
and energy for the party work. Religious communalism and ritualism were
banned.

Self-Assessment Questions

a. Who founded Hindustan Republican Association?

239
b. Write about the Kakori Conspiracy Case?

c. What do you understand by the term capitalism?

d. Who was Chandra Shekhar Azad?

13.8. SUMMARY
Students, in this lesson we have dealt with emergence of Socialist and Left
ideas in the country. They played an important role in creating upsurge and
awareness among the masses. The communists aimed to overthrow British
imperialism and establish the government of the workers and peasants.
Socialist groups were developed within the Congress too. They together
carried the movement for independence from foreign rule and the establishment
of socialist state. They organized the movements for workers and peasants.
The communist ideas led to the development of youth organizations in the
country like Naujawan Bharat Sabha and Hindustan Socialist Republican
Association. They coordinate the activities of youths all over the country. They
contributed a lot towards the national movement and Indian independence.
Their deep patriotism, courage and determination and sense of sacrifice stirred
the Indian people.

13.9. REFERENCES
Bipan Chandra Pal, et al, India’s Struggle for Independence, 1857-1947,
New Delhi: Penguin Books, 19814.
Irfan Habib, The National Movement: Studies in Ideology and History, New
Delhi: Tulika Books, 2011.
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey To Partition: A History of Modern
India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Nationalist Movement in India: A Reader, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009.

13.10. FURTHER READINGS

Ashok Kumar Patnaik, TheSovietsandtheIndianRevolutionaryMovement,
1917- 1929, New Delhi: Anamika Prakashan, 1992.
Bipin Chandra, IndianNationalMovement: The Long Term Dynamics, New
Delhi, Har-Anand Publications, 2010.
Kama Maclean, A Revolutionary History of Interwar India: Violence, Image,
Voice and Text, United Kingdom: C. Hurst & Company, 2015.
240
Ram Chandra, History of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha, India: Unistar Books,
20013.

Satyabrata Rai Chowdhuri, Leftism in India, India: Sage Publications, 20113.

13.11. MODEL QUESTIONS

1. Write a detailed note on the Left Wing Politics in India before Independence?
2. Discuss the Leftist Movement during the Freedom Struggle?
3. Write a detailed note on Naujwan Bharat Sabha, youth organisation of
the country?
4. Discuss the role of youth organisations in Indian National Movement?
5. Write a note on the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, the
youth organisation of the country?

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LESSON 14
INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY
Structure
14.0. Objectives
14.1. Introduction
14.2. Subhash Chandra Bose
14.3. Formation and Reorganization of Indian National Army
14.4. Indian National Army Trials
14.5. Summary
14.6. References
14.7. Further Readings
14.8. Model Questions

14.0. OBJECTIVES
Students, after reading this lesson you will be able to:
 understand the early life and activities of the Subhash Chandra
Bose in the Indian National Movement.
 know about the formation of Indian National Army.
 gain knowledge about the reorganization of Indian National Army and
its activities.

14.1. INTRODUCTION
Students, under the leadership of Subhash Chandra Bose, Indian National
Army actively participated as the effective fighting force. It occupies an
important place in the history of India’s struggle for freedom. It played an
important role in stimulating the Indian people’s craving for freedom. Therefore,
this lesson will examine the formation and reorganisation of Indian National
Army.

14.2. SUBHASH CHANDRA BOSE

Subhash Chandra Bose, son of Janaki Nath Bose, was born in Cuttack in
Orissa on 23 January 18913. At the age of five, Subhash Chandra was sent to
the Protestant European School run by the Baptist Mission in Cuttack. This
school, where mainly European children of the town studied, was an English
medium school. No Indian language was taught there. He spent seven years in
this school. Recognizing his son’s intellect, Subhash Chandra’s father was
determined that Bose should become a high-ranking civil servant. After
leaving the Protestant European School, he went to study in the Ravenshaw
Collegiate School in Cuttack and secured second position in his
Matriculation examination. Afterward, Bose graduated with Honours with
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flying colours from the Scottish Church College, Calcutta, and secured first
division with second position (in Philosophy) in the whole University. He also
won the Pratap Chandra Majumdar Medal and the Philip Samuel Smith and
William Smith Prizes. Bose participated as a member of the India Défense
Corps, then a newly formed military training unit at the University of Calcutta.
Afterwards, he travelled to England and attended Fitzwilliam Hall at the
University of Cambridge. At Cambridge, Bose had an unusually large
number of lectures to attend. The subjects for his Civil Service
Examination were: English Composition, Sanskrit, Philosophy, English Law,
Political Science, Modern European History, English History, Economics and
Geography. Early in July 1920, eight months after he joined Cambridge
University, Subhash Chandra sat for the Civil Service Open Competition in
London and though he had worked hard, he was not very hopeful. To his
surprise, however, he was not only successful in the examination, but came
out fourth. However, he resigned from that prestigious Service in April 1921
and became an active member of India’s independence movement.
Bose soon settled down in Calcutta and began to take stock of the
situation in the country. Unparalleled enthusiasm throughout the land had given
a fair chance for the success of the ‘triple boycott’ of foreign clothes, legislatures
and courts and educational institutions. While certain intellectual elements
including the Indian liberals opposed the non-cooperation movement, and the
Revolutionary Party opposed the cult of non-violence. Government announced
that the Prince of Wales would visit India and land in Bombay in November. The
Congress High Command immediately decided on a boycott of the visit. The
boycott was so complete in Calcutta that the Bengal Government was goaded
by the British owned newspapers to declare Congress volunteers to be illegal.
Thousands of students and factory workers began to enlist as volunteers and
two big prisons in the city were filled with political prisoners. Bose had already
become a member of the Congress and been placed in charge of this
campaign. The Government resorted to drastic action to stem the growing tide of
defiance and arrested Deshbandhu Das and his close associates, including
Subhash Chandra Bose. This was the first time in his political career that Bose
was arrested by the British; by the time he disappeared from his home in 1941,
that is, within a space of twenty years, the British detained him as a political
prisoner no fewer than eleven times.
Subhash Chandra Bose was appointed the Chief Executive Officer of
the Calcutta Cooperation in March 1924. For the first time people began to feel
that municipal officers and employees were public servants and not mere
bureaucrats. The heavy responsibilities of his office absorbed all his time and
attention, and yet he was arrested along with a number of other
Congressmen in October in a desperate attempt by the British rulers ostensibly
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to scotch a revolutionary conspiracy but actually to stem the rising tide of Swaraj
Party’s (Bose’s political mentor, ChittaranjanDas’ Party) popularity throughout
the country. The agitation over the arrest of Subhash Bose was the strongest as
the public thought that the real object of the Government was to strike at the
Swarajist administration of the Corporation. He was first lodged in jails in Bengal
and then removed to the Mandalay jail in Burma, which was then
administratively attached to India. Bose remained in Mandalay for nearly two-
and-a-half years till he was brought back to Bengal in May 1927 and released
on health grounds. During his detention in Mandalay, Bose went on a six-week
hunger strike as a protest against the British authorities’ refusal to facilitate the
observance of religious ceremonies such as Durga Puja, which is the most
important festival of the year for any Bengali.
Thereafter, Subhash Chandra became the President of the Bengal
Provincial Congress Committee. At the historic session of the Calcutta
Congress (1928), Bose worked as the Commanding Officer of the Congress
Volunteer Corps. It was at the same session that Bose and Jawaharlal
Nehru spearheaded the move for complete independence of India. Subhash
Chandra Bose became President of the Bengal Provincial Congress
Committee in 1929 and he was elected as President of the All India Trade
Union Congress in 1929. Bose became Mayor of the Calcutta
Corporation, the following year (1930). Bose was arrested for the third time
under the Regulation III Act of 18114. In jail, his health deteriorated so
seriously that Bose was released on health grounds and immediately went
to Europe for treatment. While in Europe, he made contacts with different
European personalities who sympathized with the Indian liberation
movement. During his stay in Europe from 1933, Bose met several
European leaders and thinkers, including Benito Mussolini, Eduard Benes,
Karl Seitz, Eamon de Valera, Romain Rolland and Alfred Rosenberg. He
came to believe that India could achieve political freedom only if it had
political, military and diplomatic support from outside and that an
independent nation necessitated the creation of a national army to secure its
sovereignty. Subhash Chandra Bose was unanimously elected President of
51st Indian National Congress in 1938, and was re-elected the following year.
But soon he became alienated from the core Congress leadership due to his
militant stand and opted to resign his Presidency on 29 April 1939. To
promote his political views, Bose founded the Forward Bloc on 3 May 1939
within the Congress in the same year, and tried to consolidate the
revolutionary forces of India in general and of Bengal in particular.
Subhash Chandra supported the Axis powers in the Second World
War (1939-1945). The Congress Working Committee took disciplinary action
against him for criticizing the Congress ministeries formed in seven provinces
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after the election of 19313. He arranged an Anti-Compromise Conference at
Ramgarh, Bihar on 19 March 1940 under the joint auspices of the Forward
Bloc and the Kisan Sabha. It was under his leadership that the Nagpur
Session of the All India Forward Bloc, held in June 1940, placed the
demand for the establishment of a Provisional National Government in
India. On 2 July 1940, Subhash Chandra Bose was arrested in connection
with his involvement in the movement for the removal of the Holwell
Monument in Calcutta. While in jail, he went on hunger strike and was
released in December 1940. Over a span of 20 years, Bose was
incarcerated eleven times by the British, either in India or in Burma (now in
Myanmar). In the mid-night of 16 January 1941, Bose secretly and
mysteriously left Calcutta, popularly known as his ‘Great Escape’ crossed
the border of India through the north-western frontier and entered Russia
through Kabul. After his arrival in Berlin on 2 April 1941, Bose enlisted
German support to organize anti-British movements. He formed Indian
Independence League on 9December 1941 and began to propagate his
ideas through regular broadcasts from Berlin. From Germany Bose also
made contacts with Japan. Backed by the Governments of both Germany
and Japan, he started his voyage from Kiel port of Germany to Singapore in
a submarine and reached there on 2 July 1943.
The Indian prisoners-of-war held by the Japanese, showed
tremendous enthusiasm on Bose's arrival in Singapore. Meanwhile, Rash
Behari Bose, an old Indian revolutionary who had escaped to Japan in
disguise after the First World War, organized the Indian independence
movement in East Asia and formed the Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National
Army). Later, he formally handed over the charge of the I.N.A. to Subhash
Chandra Bose, who became its Commander-in-Chief on 25 August 1943
and declared the formation of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind on
21 October of the same year and Rash Behari Bose served as an Advisor of
the Provincial Government of Azad Hind. Rash Behari Bose breathed his
last on 21 January 1945. Bose’s Azad Hind Government was internationally
recognized by various independent nations. He transferred the headquarters
of the I.N.A. to Rangoon in January 1944. From Rangoon, Bose conducted
military operations against the British forces on the Burma borders and
began his onward march towards India. He captured two of the British
outposts on the way towards Imphal and Kohima on 18 March 1944 and the
flag of free India was hoisted. Owing to the natural calamities in the hills of
Kohima and Nagaland and also the change of war scenario due to the
surrender of Japan after the atomic explosion in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Bose’s Indian National Army (I.N.A.) had to make a glorious retreat and it
was reported by a news agency that Bose died in an air-crash at Taiwan
245
Airport on 18 August, 1945. However, after conduction of a number of
investigations and enquiry procedures by the Anglo-American secret
agencies and later on by the Government of India, which conducted enquiry
for three times, it has been proved by the last investigation that Bose had
not died in the alleged air-crash and that he had maneuvered his so-called
‘Death Story’ to delude the Anglo- American forces. In Europe and East
Asia, Subhash Chandra Bose was greatly honoured and called Netaji by his
admirers and followers and from then onwards till this time Bose is revered
and called as Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. Write a few sentences on Forward Bloc?

b. Which title was received by Subhash Chandra Bose?

c. When Subhash Chandra Bose was elected as President of Indian

National Congress?

d. Write a few sentences on Mandalay Jail?

14.3. FORMATION AND REORGANIZATION OFINDIAN NATIONAL ARMY

The formation of Indian National Army was not just an event but a
historical phenomenon. It was also the consequence of a long process of
dissatisfaction not only with the British rule but also with the Gandhian
strategy of struggle for the independence of India. The outbreak of the Second
World War gave an opportunity to those old revolutionaries who had been
working for India’s independence for the past many years abroad. During the
war, when Mohan Singh’s battalion was holding a defensive position on
Malayan-Thai (Siamese) border, a few pamphlets dropped by the Japanese
came to their notice which contained slogans like Asia For Asiatic, Kick Out The
White Devils From The East, We Have Come To Liberate Asia From The
Deadly Clutches of Anglo-Saxons, No Asiatic Is Our Enemy etc. After seeing
these pamphlets, Mohan Singh felt confident that if he approached the
Japanese with his plan, they would certainly not stand in his way to raise a truly
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Indian army to fight the British. Major Fujiwara, head of the Japanese
Intelligence Services accompanied by a Sikh gentleman, Sardar Pritam Singh of
Bangkok, met Mr. Mohan Singh. He sought the help of the Japanese to raise an
Indian National Army to liberate India. Indian National Army was founded in
Singapore in September 1942. Approximately 16,000 volunteers were allowed
by the Japanese to be absorbed into the Indian National Army but Mohan Singh
was keen for expanding his forces to around 40,000. By the end of October
1942, almost all the captured Indian army equipment and a large proportion of
the supplies were handed over to Mohan Singh. The Japanese declared that all
surplus volunteers would therefore be regarded as prisoners of war. It shows
that Japanese did not want Indian National Army to become too strong. Later,
Mohan Singh raised some of the issues: there was some impropriety in work or
action of some Japanese in connection with the management of the properties
of absentee Indian in Burma; the Japanese side had not given recognition to the
I.N.A. by publicly announcing its existence; the Japanese side has an intention
of using the I.N.A.; and there have been several happenings of assault and
insult inflicted by Japanese on the officers and men of the Indian National
Army. The arrest of Col. N.S. Gill and others also caused the rift between
Mohan Singh and Japanese authority.
Mohan Singh expressed the possibility of disbanding I.N.A. due to
the non-cooperative and superiority complex on the part of Japanese army.
He not only accepted but also agreed to dissolve I.N.A. while Lt. Col.
EshanQuadir opposed this move strongly. This attitude of Mohan Singh
created strong reaction and concern among the Indian Independence
League leadership. Therefore, League headquarters asked the Japanese
authority to remove Mohan Singh from General Officer Commanding and
allow him only as a soldier in I.N.A. On the recommendations of I.I.L, Mohan
Singh was dismissed from the position of General Officer Commanding of
I.N.A. Before his removal, Mohan Singh had already written to IwakuruKikan
that he had severed all his connections with the Indian Independence
Movement in East Asia and arbitrarily made a proposal to Iwakuru, the
Chief of IwakuruKikan, about the dissolution of the I.N.A., under the
impression that it was his own private army. Thus, he had reached a
conclusion which was not acceptable both to the Indian Independence
League and the Japanese side. Mohan Singh not only proposed to dissolve
I.N.A. but also released all men in concentration camps and were allowed
to return to their parental units. This was the extreme step taken by Mohan
Singh and his team against the interest of Japanese as well as I.I.L.
Consequently, Mohan Singh was arrested on 29 December 1942. When
Mohan Singh was arrested, the majority of I.N.A. personnel laid down their
arms and refused to get any training. Singapore was most affected. Rash
247
Behari Bose and Japanese authority had to work hard to get I.N.A. going
again to their job.
After the arrest of Mohan Singh, Indian National Army became not only
leaderless but also faced a chaotic situation when most of the members of the
Council of Action of Indian Independence League and Indian National Army
resigned from their posts. It created concern among Japanese circle also. Now
Rash Behari Bose was the ‘one-man force’ in I.I.L. and I.N.A. in spite of
his old age and deteriorating health. Rash Behari Bose plunged into the task of
collecting money; organizing a national army and at the same time making a
start with recruitment and training of young Indian volunteers for the National
Army. In 1943, Rash Behari Bose held several meetings with Indian National
Army officers and discussed the possibilities of reviving the Army. Rash Behari
Bose quickly reorganized the Committee consisting of J.K. Bhonsle
(President), A.C. Chatterjee, Logandan, M.Z. Kiani, Eshan Qadir, Prakash
Chand, P.K. Sehgal and S.M. Hussain.
In February 1943, a conference was held at Kuala Lumpur in which
officers such as Shah Nawaz Khan, Capt. Data, Gurbuksh Singh Dhillon
and M.Z. Kiani participated. Major Kiani was the chief spokesman in this
conference where he tried to justify the disbandment of Capt. Mohan Singh’s
army and the establishment of second I.N.A. The structure, as existed in
April 1943, of the new I.N.A. was almost like the first I.N.A. Unlike the old
I.N.A. which recruited only from Indian army, prisoners of war, the new I.N.A.
was recruited in which many Tamil civilians from Madras were enlisted.
Methods of recruitment became less severe and different forms of torture
had been abolished. The relationship between the Indian Independence
League and the new I.N.A. was classified whereas Mohan Singh regarded
the I.N.A. as his personal army and assumed the role of ‘Dictator’; the re-
organized army was more controlled by I.I.L. policy. The organization of the
New I.N.A. was similar to that of the Old I.N.A. Bhonsle succeeded Mohan
Singh as Commander of the I.N.A. on 21 February, 1943 and the following
officers were given important positions: J. K. Bhonsle, Mirza Inayat Ali,
Shah Nawaz Khan, Major Sehgal.
In April 1943, the new I.N.A. was formally re-organized. On 26 April
1943, Major General Iwakuru accompanied by Col. Yamamoto and other
general staff officers of the southern regions inspected the newly built units
of the I.N.A. at Bidadari and Neeson. A general meeting of prominent Indians
from all over South-East Asia was held at the headquarters of the Indian
Independence League from April 27 to 30, 1943 in which it was declared that
Rash Behari Bose would be “the constitution (Dictator) of the Indian
Independence Movement in the Far East”. It was further added that in case
of the death or resignation of Rash Behari Bose, Mr. Subhash Chandra Bose will
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assume the same powers and continue the struggle until the complete
independence of India is achieved. It means I.I.L. leadership was seriously
discerning to make the arrangement for Bose to be brought to South-East
Asia. In the midst of World War II, i.e. in January 1941, Bose mysteriously
disappeared from his home and went first to Kabul via Peshawar through the
Khyber Pass and then went to Russia and Germany. He reached Berlin on his
Italian passport on 28 March 1941.
Bose had the keen sense to understand that Hitler’s Germany rather
than Mussolini’s Italy would offer him a more strategic opportunity for
liberating India. Therefore, a meeting with Hitler was fixed on 29 May 1942.
During his meeting with Hitler, the latter agreed to Bose’s proposal and
the ‘Free Indian legion’ was established. The Wehrmacht took up the task of
training it in North-West Europe. Germans gave training to some volunteers
(P.O.W.), who were captured on 8 April 1941 and in October 1942. They
were taught the military geography of Afghanistan marching by compass,
military economy and world politics. Germans, who were advancing rapidly
towards eastern parts of Russia and the Caucasus in the last of 1942, had
some idea of using these trained soldiers in India by sending them through
Afghanistan. But this strategic opportunity came to naught by the twin defeat
of the Germans at Stalingrad and E.I. Alamein. The prevailing situation
showed that the side was turning against the Nazis.
During his short stay in Germany, Bose organized a broadcast
programme which opened as the ‘secret station’ Azad Hind Radio in
December 1941. But the circumstances did not seem to favour Bose in
Germany. Rash Behari Bose was very keen to bring Subhash Chandra Bose
to Singapore to tackle the problems created by Mohan Singh. Rash Behari
Bose found a capable leader in Bose who could inspire confidence and
infuse fresh life and vigour into the whole movement. In June 1942, a
resolution was passed by the Bangkok Conference in which the Imperial
Government of Japan was asked to bring Bose to South-East Asia
immediately. Therefore, Japanese authorities made arrangements for Bose’s
arrival to Tokyo. Bose left Germany with his aide Abid Hasan in German
Submarine U-180, captained by Commander Werner Musenberg on 08
February 1943. On 24 April 1943, they made their connection with the
Japanese Submarine I-29 in the Indian Ocean and became a guest of the
Imperial Japanese Army commanded by Captain Izu. Consequently,
Bose arrived in Tokyo on 15 June 1943.
Subhash Chandra Bose after reaching Tokyo convinced the
Japanese high command that the I.N.A. from a mere propaganda threat
could be transformed into a real physical threat to the Raj. The Nipponese
Premier agreed to this scheme because he had understood that Bose’s
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organizing capabilities were much greater than erstwhile commanders of
Indian National Army like Mohan Singh, J.K. Bhonsle and Rash Behari Bose.
Hence, the Japanese, like the Germans, drilled and equipped the Indian
prisoners of war into a Satellite Army. The Axis block in fact had created
several vassal armies to combat against the Allies. In the case of Germany,
the most famous was General Vlasov’s army recruited from the Russian
prisoners of war and it fought against Stalin’s Red Army. The Japanese also
organized various forces in South-East Asia, and the most remarkable
among them was Aung Sung of the Burmese National Army.
Bose was able to wrest more autonomy from the Japanese theatre
commanders than other vassal, i.e. Asian leaders because of his financial
independence. This was due to Bose’s charismatic personality which
enabled him to accumulate funds from the Punjabi and the Sindhi business
community scattered throughout South-East Asia. With those funds, Bose
could be able to recruit and train more civilians for the Indian National Army.
The uniqueness of Bose’s military force was that the higher ranks were
opened for all Indians across castes, creed, sex and religion, thus brushing
aside the imperial argument that the Indians were unsuitable for the top
command slots. Secondly, Bose unlike the British did not rely upon the so
called ‘martial races’ but inducted the south Indians and the low castes who
were regarded as ‘unmartial’ by the imperialists. These people were actually
immigrants working as laborers in South-East Asia. Further, Bose did not
practice any discrimination against such marginal groups in his army. So, for
the first time in modern India, any army whose social composition was based
on egalitarian principles came into existence. Thirdly, Bose was able to
maintain communal harmony in his forces, an exacting task, in which the
British failed during their last days in India. Fourthly, Bose was ahead of his
times. He gave women equality within the force. It is to be noted that no
other force, not even the present Indian Army except the Tactical Air Force of
the Soviet Union, did accept women in the combat branches.
Subhash Chandra Bose accompanied by Rash Behari Bose
arrived by air from Tokyo to Singapore only to lead, control and recognize
the Indian Independence League and Indian National Army which were in
dire need of reformation. The morale of not only Indian Independence
League and Indian National Army was decreasing very fast but the tide had
already turned against the Japanese also. Japan missed the chance to
conquer in mid 1942. At that time, the military position of Allied forces in
South-East Asia was shaky. The sepoys and the educated middle-class
Indians who were commissioned as officers due to emergency were aghast
at the discrimination meted out to them vis-a-vis the white officers as regard
service conditions and in the messes. So, the brown soldiers were on the
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threshold of rebellion. Further, the continuous defeat of their white masters at
the hands of the Asiatic ‘yellow’ men had completely crushed the mythical
supremacy of the Europeans over the Asians. But Japan could not be
successful in exploiting the situation in its favour. After coming to Singapore,
Netaji indulged in comprehensive discussion with the Indian Independence
League and Indian National Army leadership about the overall situation in
South-East Asia.
One 4 July 1943, a historic conference of East Asia was organized in
which Rash Behari Bose and Subhash Chandra Bose delivered enthusiastic
speeches which created excitement among the gathering in this conference. In
the presence of representatives of Indian Independence League and its
branches from all over East Asia, Rash Behari Bose appointed Subhash
Chandra Bose as President of the Indian Independence League in East-Asia.
Subhash Chandra Bose accepted this heavy responsibility with an impressive
speech to the assembled delegates, and appointed Rash Behari Bose as
Supreme Advisor of the League. In the course of his speech, he foreshadowed
his plan to form a provisional government of free India to lead the National army
to battle when the opportune moment arrives.
The first task which Netaji addressed himself after taking over the
presidency of the Indian Independence League of East Asia was the
reorganization of the League headquarters with a view to putting it on a war
footing. The reorganization of the headquarters was affected according to the
programme of ‘Total Mobilization’ of all the resources of Indians in East Asia,
i.e. resources in men, money and material. Following was the reorganization
of the headquarters, branches of the League throughout East-Asia on the same
line for the same purpose of ‘Total Mobilisation’. Under this scheme, besides the
volunteering of youth and young women, strenuous efforts were made
everywhere to collect funds for the independence movement and also to
purchase and collect supplies necessary for the Army. On 8 July 1943,
Subhash Chandra Bose announced to the world the formation of the Azad
Hind Fauj and next day, at a mammoth mass rally of Indians in Syonan,
numbering well over 50,000 placed before Indians in East-Asia a programme
of ‘Total Mobilization’ to win India’s complete independence. Three days
later, i.e. on 12 July 1943, Netaji announced his decision to organize a
fighting force of women in East-Asia, to be named after the famous Rani
Luxmi Bai of Jhansi who fought against the British in India’s First War of
Independence in 1857 as termed by not only Savarkar but by Independence
League in its propaganda material everywhere. On 25 August 1943,
Subhash Chandra Bose directed the special order of the day as, “In the
interest of the Indian Independence Movement and of the Azad Hind Fauj, I
have taken over the direct command of our Army from this day”. He made
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following changes in the designations of I.N.A. offices: The Directorate,
Military Bureau I.I.L, East-Asia will be known as Headquarters, Supreme
Command, Indian National Army, in English correspondence. Headquarters,
SipahSalar, Azad Hind Fauj, in Roman Urdu correspondence, The Director,
Military Bureau I.I.L, East-Asia will be known as Chief of Staff, Headquarters,
Supreme command, I.N.A., Headquarters of the Indian National Army will be
known as Headquarters No. 1 Division, Indian National Army.
After completing the task of changes in I.I.L. and I.N.A. set-up, Bose
toured various camps to take the stock of the attitude of prisoners of war who
were kept in these camps. But Netaji was not much hopeful from these
people and changed his strategy of recruitment. Now Netaji called for
civilians to send their young sons and daughters into I.N.A. Indian responded
heartily to his call for total mobilization. With the help of South-East Asia
Indians, Netaji succeeded in attracting not only money and materials but
approximately 18,000 civilians to his Army. The Japanese officers gave the
I.N.A. units guerrilla training included musketry, bayonet fighting and
camouflage work. There were several schools to be operated by the Indians
under the control and guidance of Japanese intelligence agency Hikari
Kikan. More than a dozen espionage training schools were being run in
Burma and Malaya by renegade Indians whose enthusiasm was an
inadequate substitute for experience. In consequence even, the
indoctrination of many agents was not thorough, while the practical training
they received was so sketchy that their missions were foredoomed to failure.
If any comparison with Europe was possible, the efforts of these schools
might be set beside those of Germany directed against Great Britain in the
summer of 1940.
Now the stage was set for the next step. On 21 October 1943, before
a gathering of delegates from Indian Independence League in East-Asia,
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose announced the formation of the ‘Provisional
Government of Azad Hind’ in a stirring proclamation signed by himself and
the ministers of the newly formed Provisional Government. The Provisional
Government of Free India was promptly recognized by nine world powers
including Japan, Germany, Italy and Thailand. Following personalities were
included in this government: Subhash Chandra Bose: Head of the State,
Minister of War and Foreign Affairs; Capt. Mrs. Lakshmi Sehgal: Head of
Women’s Department; S.A. Ayer: Publicity and Propaganda; A.C. Chatterjee:
Finance; A.M. Sahay: Secretary; A. N. Sarkar: Legal Advisor; Aziz Ahmed,
N.S. Bhagat, J. K. Bhonsle, Guljara Singh, M.Z. Kiani, A. D. Loganadan,
Ehsan Qadir, Shah Nawaz: all representatives of Armed Forces; Karim Gani,
Debnath Das, D.M. Khan, A. Uallappa, J. Thiry, Sardar Ishar Singh: as
Advisors; and Rash Behari Bose, Supreme Advisor.
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A striking feature of this Government of Free India was the inclusion
of women in the cabinet. The next day, i.e. 22 October 1943, on the
occasion of the birthday anniversary of the Rani Luxmi Bai, Netaji opened the
first training camp for volunteers to the Rani of Jhansi regiment. Girls in their
teenage crowded the camp and threw themselves with all their heart and
soul into intensive military training under the command of Capt. (Mrs.)
Lakshmi. On the completion of training, the volunteers were being absorbed
into the ‘Rani of Jhansi Regiment’. Volunteers were given two types of
training – Military and Nursing. Those who wish to do only Nursing and Red
Cross work were absorbed into the Red Cross Unit. There were fixed rules
and regulations concerning qualifications, duration of training, strength of
unit, etc.
After completing the organizational functions, a few days later Netaji
Subhash Chandra Bose flew to Japan and arrived in Tokyo on 1 November
1943, where he was officially received by the Government of Japan as the Head
of the Provisional Government of Free India. The Assembly of the Greater East
Asiatic Nations was held in Tokyo on 5 November 1943 where Netaji was
present as an observer. At the sitting of the Assembly on 7 November 1943,
Japanese Premier Tojo announced his government’s decision to hand over the
Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the Provisional Government of Free India,
which in due course renamed these islands as Shaheed and Swaraj islands
respectively.
Now Subhash Chandra Bose struck an agreement regarding
relations between I.N.A. and Japanese forces. A common strategy in the
operation plan will be chalked out by the Commanders of I.N.A. and
Japanese Army headquarters at Rangoon; the I.N.A. and Japanese Armies
are allies and will remain equal in status in all respect; the command of I.N.A.
forces and their units will remain in the hands of I.N.A. officers; I.N.A. forces
should not be split up in small groups; all I.N.A. units will be composite units
and will not be attached to any Japanese formations; to maintain equal status
of I.N.A. and Japanese Army, saluting was to be observed on a reciprocal
basis; I.N.A. forces will be governed by I.N.A. military law and Army Act and
the Japanese headquarters will not be within its bounds to interfere in any
way with its discipline and regulation; total mobilization of men, money and
materials on Indian soil will be conducted by the Provisional Government of
Azad Hind, territories liberated in Indian soil must be handed over to the
I.N.A. administration under the overall command of Major General Zaman
Kiani, the Divisional Commander who will hand over the charge of
administration of liberated areas to Major General A.C. Chatterjee,
Governor designate of liberated areas and leader of Azad Hind Dal; dumps
of arms, ammunition, oil, stores equipment’s, machineries and all war
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materials seized by the Japanese army must be handed over to Provisional
Government of Azad Hind, and the only flag that would be permitted to fly
over liberated areas is the Indian tri- colour- The Indian National Flag.

In 1942, advancing Japanese forces had reached the Chindwin river in

West-Central Burma, near the Indian frontier. The main strategy of the Japanese
was to push their defence line from river Chindwin to a more strategic place in
the Indo-Burma frontier mountains in order to capture the Imphal and Kohima
areas, which were the main base of Anglo-American forces, and thus to forestall
their design to attack towards the end of the 1943. The Indian National Army
units began to move to Burma in anticipation of the forthcoming Japanese all-
out offensive of early 1944. In Burma, throughout 1943, there was nothing but
frontier patrolling and skirmishing. Small groups of trained Japanese Inspired
Fifth Columnists (JILFs) from Rangoon were sent to numerous forward posts
(Paungbying, Kalewa, Mawlaik, Hamalin etc.) to carry out recess for Japanese
units and to disseminate propaganda leaflets. There was, however, no real
fighting and a large number of these JILFs seized the opportunity to return to
India and surrender. In the first week of January 1944, the Indian National Army
shifted its headquarters from Singapore to Rangoon. On 27 January 1944, the
Indian National Army received the final order from the Supreme Commander of
Nipponese forces for the final move towards India and fired the first shot for
India’s independence by starting an offensive war against Britain on 4 February
1944 in the Arakan region. First party of No. 1 battalion moved to the ‘Arakan’
front and its number 2 and number 3 battalions moved towards the ‘Kalewa’
front. They won the Arakan fight by 20 February 1944.
Starting successes raised the morale and hope of the personnel of
Indian National Army and its leadership. Therefore, on 18 March 1944, the
Provisional Government proclaimed that the Azad Hind Fauj crossed the
Indo- Burma border and were fighting on Indian soil. On 1 April 1944, Mohan
Singh’s unit attacked a well-defended enemy position on a certain hill in the
Kaladan sector. Mohan Singh died in an attack and was conferred with the
title of Shahid-I-Hind posthumously by Netaji.
On 5 April 1944, Netaji opened the National Bank of Azad Hind in
Rangoon. The patriotic spirit of four Indians in Rangoon took tangible shape
in the establishment of the Bank at a very short notice with a capital of 10
million rupees and the Bank’s services to the Provisional Government and
the Indian National Army grew so extensive and varied that it had to open
three branches – two in Rangoon and one in Taunggy, Burma. Indians in
Burma poured crores of rupees into the war chest of the Provisional
Government. This act was a great example of selfless sacrifice; they were
inspired by the shining examples of Habeed Saheb and Srimati Betai, who
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placed all their worldly possessions at Netaji’s disposal for the prosecution of
the war of independence. Only Habeed Saheb’s total assets were estimated
at over one crore of rupees.
In 1944, the Azad Hind Fauj, in close collaboration with the armed forces
of Japan, continued to smash its way towards Imphal (Capital of Manipur), the
gateway to the plains of Assam. The most important road of this place was that
which ran northwards passing down through Kohima (Nagaland) and then to
connect with the Assam railways station at Dimapur. The second route from
Imphal to South-East ward was a fairly good road shot straight across the plain
up to Kabow valley to the banks of the Chindwin. That was the strategic location
of the 20th Indian Division under Douglas Gracery. Third road of this place was
the single-track way through Chin Hills of Tiddim, 162 miles away from Imphal.
Here the 17th Indian Light Division faced the white tigers of the Japanese 33rd
Division. In addition to these three principal routes, there were two secondary
gateways into the Imphal plain, on both of which, as well on the other three,
sanguinary battles were fought. Brigadier Lucas Phillips of the British army
stated that Manipur was a border of India and Burma, a little, semi-
independent state, lay a large, oval upland plain which in ancient days
had been the bed of a mountain lake.
According to the intelligence report about the Kohima, Imphal
campaign of 1944, the mass offensive opened with the unsuccessful drive in
the Arakan, followed in March by the advances on Kohima, Imphal and
Tiddim. These advances were made purely by Japanese forces to which
they had been allotted a quota of trained JILFs of Bahadur. Thus, during the
early and sweeping phases of the advances, many reports were received of
JILF activities, particularly in the Sangshak fighting and the siege of Kohima
when broadcast exhortations were made to subvert British Indian troops.
1944 was the year planned for the Japanese all-out offensive strategy
unfortunately for them owing to the earlier crisis in the I.N.A., as the I.N.A.
was still an embryonic organization only. The training schools were short of
recruits and cadets. Only No. 1 division (Commander M.Z. Kiani) of the
I.N.A. was fully trained by early 1944 and sent to Burma. Up to May 1944,
generally all the Guerrilla Regiments of I.N.A. were allowed to follow-up
behind the Japanese thrust. After much argument, the Japanese agreed to
allow the Regiments of I Division I.N.A. to operate as Regiments and not as
subunits of Japanese formations. Gandhi regiment was ordered to pursue
retreating British elements along the TamuPalal road. Flushed with
enthusiasm but without adequate reconnaissance, a special raiding force of
about 250 men under Lt. Pritam Singh (Kapurthala Infantry), set out on the
night of 2/3 May to capture the Palol Landing strip. From British side Gurkha
piquet was No. 11 platoon of ‘B’ coy 4/10 Gurkhas, which ambushed Gandhi
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Regiment. The I.N.A. force then withdrew in disorder having suffered
considerable casualties. The I.N.A. leadership was of the opinion that if the
Imphal campaign had gone according to the plan, first Manipur, then Assam,
the Chittagong would have been liberated by the Azad Hind Fauj. Such an
expectation and plans had to be made in advance to move the Headquarters
of the Provisional Government and of the Indian National Army to the
liberated territory in India. Accordingly, the headquarters of the Government
and the Army were recognized in order to carry on their activities
simultaneously in three distinct zones, namely East- Asia, liberated territories
in India, and the territories still under British occupation in India.
When the rainy season came, the monsoon deluge flooded the
communication and supply routes on the front. The Indian National Army
was halted for the first time in July 1944 since it started operations in
February 1944. There were no pitched battles but a certain number of
patrol clashes. 2 Guerrilla (Gandhi) Regiment (under Capt. I. J. Kiani,
Commander) was deployed on either side of the TamuPalel road. 3. Guerrilla
(Azad) Regiment Command (under Capt. Gulzara Singh) was deployed
towards the north of the road in the Mintha area. Malaria and sickness took a
heavy toll and when the Japanese supply system broke down, starvation and
diseases overtook the Japanese and the Indian National Army. Of the 6,000
I.N.A. troops on the Tamu front, 50 were killed in action by bombing, 1000
died from starvation/disease and 600 deserted to join the British. The siege
of Kohima by the Japanese and the I.N.A. was frustrated by the air
superiority of the British. Besides these reasons, the treatment of Japanese
with I.N.A. troops played a harmful role at this crucial juncture. On 26 March
1944, Major Thakur Singh registered a complaint about this. On 30 March
1944, Boobie of I.N.A. complained that Japanese were using the Indian
National Army’s Crack Regiment as labourers. In September 1944, Major
P.K. Sehgal lodged a protest against the unfriendly attitude by N.C.O. of
liaison staff of Hikari Kikan during the meeting with Lt. Col. Kitabe. Lt. Col.
Kitabe got angry and flatly rejected the proposal saying that such
interference by the I.N.A. with the personal matter of the Nippon Army
was quite out of place.
In the meantime, the British forces began to advance into Burma.
The retreat from Imphal was a blow to the campaign which had started off so
well. But this blow did not result in depression or demoralization. The
Provisional Government, the Indian National Army and the three million
Indians in East- Asia took the blow stoically. In order to achieve total
mobilization in proper form, the war council of the Provisional Government
was formed with the following members: J. K. Bhonsle, M.Z. Kiani, Ehsan
Qadir, Aziz Ahmad Khan, Habib-ur-Rehman, Gulzara Singh, Sri N.
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Raghavan, Sri S.A. Ayer, Sri Parmanand, A.C. Chatterjee (Secretary), and
Sri A. Yellappa, who had to direct and control the war efforts. Meanwhile, the
Japanese armed forces suffered a series of defeats in the Pacific. So, they
could not really supply the Indian National Army with a substantial amount
of military hardware. Consequently,
I.N.A. also failed.
The 1944 campaign compelled Bose to go to Tokyo in January 1945 to
secure greater independence and autonomy in the I.N.A. command, and
freedom from Hikari Kikan. Bose then convinced the Japanese ruling elite that
though from the military perspective, the Indian National Army was a paper
Tiger; and from the political perspective, it could be as lethal as the Royal
Bengal Tiger. Bose persuasively argued that even if the Japanese invade India
with a token force, the very presence of the I.N.A. would result in mass
desertions from the colonial Indian Army and political upheavals in India.
The agreement also could not improve the situation. This time also strife
between Nippon militarist’s superiority complex and I.N.A. 's resistance
against it remained intact. Col. Gulzara Singh met Lt. Col. Ogawa in
connection with medicine, clothing, boots, arms and ammunition, better
accommodations, etc. Ogawa San tried his best to meet requirements but
the result was not satisfactory.
The Japanese military intelligence information that the newly set-up
South-East Asia command under Lord Louis Mountbatten was preparing to
re- conquer Burma. To thwart the Allied attempt, the Japanese Burma area
army along with Indian National Army geared itself for launching a limited
attack on the Arakans and the Imphal –Kohima sector. However, the
Japanese offensive disintegrated due to superior allied air power. When
Field Marshal Slim’s14th Indian Army and General Stilwell’s American
Chinese forces launched two counter attacks along the central and northern
Burma, the Japanese front collapsed. As the war situation in Burma began
to turn worse, No. 1 Division that was in the Pyinmana area for taking rest
had to prepare them to hamper the advancement of British troops. Both the
Pyinmana troops and Rangoon troops were very poorly equipped, especially
in the matter of arms. I.N.A. had approached Hikari Kikan again and again
but in vain. Therefore, Gen. Kiani proposed to see the responsible officer of
Mori Butai (Unit) and Major Kaetsu met him. Kaetsu said that Mori Butai
could not help the I.N.A. in a substantial way but he would try to do his best.
As to the war situation, Major Kaetsu gave Gen. Kiani only a false hope. A
meeting was held in which Kiani, Kandomatsu and Kagawa met and agreed
that I.N.A. troops in Rangoon, except I.N.A. headquarters and body guards,
battalions would be placed under the unified command of Rangoon Défense
Command (under Major Gen. Matsui being Commander). In this agreement,
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Indian National Army was allotted two areas to be defended: Thingangyun
Area and II Mingaladon Area. In this task, Rangoon Defense Command
promised to give necessary tools and materials. When Maj. Riaz of I.N.A.
approached Saku Butai for more arms and ammunition to No. 2 Division,
response of Saku Butai was not favorable and, therefore, Riaz came back to
Rangoon without proceeding any further than Jaiki and reported to Bose.
Bose lodged a strong protest with the Nippon side (Isoda& Kagawa) against
its insincerity to support the I.N.A.
From July 1944 to February 1945, I.N.A. tried to reorganize itself in
the term of ‘Total Mobilisation’. To achieve this object, in the second half of
1944, S.C. Bose addressed many mass rallies in Rangoon and Singapore to
muster support for ‘Total Mobilisation’ from the Indians residing in these
cosmopolitan cities. But the enthusiasm of these people was fading due to
discouragement propaganda by those who had belief in infallibility in British
imperialism. Subhash Chandra Bose devoted too much of his energies to
delivering propaganda lectures, rather than insisting on better military
equipment etc. The actual fighting performed by the I.N.A. in the 1944
campaign was negligible. It spent the bulk of its time fighting hunger and
disease and the inefficiency of its own organization. The I.N.A.’s strategy of
provoking rebellion among the mass came to naught because the Japanese
and the I.N.A. failed to penetrate into the province of Bengal and Bihar but
instead wasted itself in the politically undeveloped tribal dominated and
sparsely populated North-East India. Much credit goes to British
intelligence and information control techniques whose efforts succeeded in
stopping all the I.N.A. activities and news reaching to the Indian populace.
Finally, the British high command was able to brainwash the newly raised
Indian levies by projecting the I.N.A. not as patriots but merely Namak
Haram who had broken the sacred oath of loyalty to the King-Emperor.
Bose’s Tokyo visit bore fruit in the campaign of 1945 when I.N.A.
regiments took orders only from headquarters. The I.N.A. Regiment
commanders were authorized to exercise initiative and independent command
within the areas allotted to them. In 1945, the I.N.A. became more of a fighting
force and fought more as Allies of the Japanese rather than as an
appendage of the Japanese Army. During the Tokyo conference, it was agreed
to increase a loan up to 100,000,000 tacacs for the Provisional Government of
Azad Hind from Southern Region Development Bank (NAMPATSU) for the year
1945 starting from March. Up to that time, Indian National Army had been
supplied, free of charge, with perishable rations in kind. According to a new
agreement during the meeting between Kiani and Kagawa in February 1945, the
Indian National Army was to buy perishable ration and Hikari Kikan assured the
necessary help. From February 1945 I.N.A. restarted its campaign. The
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remnants of 1 Division’s 1, 2 and 3 Guerrilla Regiments (about 4000 men) were
finally sent back to Zeyawaddy Rest Camp and units of 2 Division I.N.A. were
hurriedly brought up from Malaya. By the beginning of February, the allied
Division had advanced through Shwebo, Monywa, Sagaing and Pakokku and
stood poised for the assault on Mandaky and for the thrust across the Irrawaddy.
The period from 15 February to 30 April, 1945 was the period of heavy and
constant fighting and these 2 ½ months included the entire Indian National
Army’s 1945 campaign of frontline fighting. The period opened with the British
thrust across the Irrawaddy at Nyaungu and thus ended with the total
disintegration of all I.N.A. forces.
On 15 February 1945, British forces in the Pakokku area opened their
attack on the I.N.A. forces (1,000 men of Nehru Regiment) which lined the
southern bank of the Irrawaddy in the Nyaungu area. The weight of the Allied
bombing, mortaring and shelling demoralized the I.N.A. defenders and on 18
February 1945 over 300 men of Nehru Regiment surrendered voluntarily to the
British forces. The remaining 700 men under Regimental Commander, Lt. G.
S. Dhillon retreated in disorderly confusion to the Mount Popa areas. On 22
February 1945, Hari Ram’s battalion of Indian National Army surrendered.
About the time when British mobile forces penetrating into Meiktila area after
crossing Irrawaddy river, then at the request of Moributai, Hikari Kikan
asked I.N.A. to dispatch a crack unit to the area in question, to win over
British Indian Army because the enemy’s position was improving
continuously. British had occupied Pyinbin and were advancing on
Taungtha, and Meiktila Bridge was bombed on 25 February 1945. On the
same day, Netaji arrived at Rangoon to control the deteriorating condition of
the whole movement. He met Kadomatsh of Hikari Kikan and said that he
could not cooperate with Nippon, if Nippon did not change its attitude. But
neither Moributai nor Hikari Kikan showed any sincerity in assisting the
Provisional Government of Azad Hind and continued to defy and breach the
Tojo’s pledge of assisting I.N.A. in every way. A little before this meeting, the
Burmese Government had seized clothes available in the markets, saying
that they would affect ‘price control’; with the result that Indian merchants
gravely suffered. These Indian merchants were a great help to the
Provisional Government and such situation aggrieved Subhash Chandra
immensely. Bose believed that Moributai was pushing Burmese Government
from behind.
Immediately after reaching Rangoon on 25 February 1945, Subhash
took the stock of the prevailing circumstances. The process of desertion
started due to heavy bombardment. On 3 March 1945, Riaz, Mada,
Sarwar and Dey had deserted I.N.A. This upset Subhash Chandra Bose and
issued a special order of the day on 13 March 1945 to destroy completely
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the germs of cowardice and treachery. The following measures were
adopted by every member of the Azad Hind Fauj- Officer, N.C.O. or Sepoy,
will in future be entitled to arrest any other member of Azad Hind Fauj, if he
behaved in a cowardly manner or to shoot him if he acted in a treacherous
manner. He further cautioned: “In order to express our indignation, disgust
and hatred against cowardice and treachery, a special observance will be
held in every camp of Azad Hind Fauj”.
The last quarter of March 1945 was the time of heavy air raids by British
Air Forces which caused large scale disorder in the Indian National Army circle.
On 2 April 1945, signal officers of No. 2 Regiment deserted from I.N.A. Capt.
Mohd. Hussain and his adjutant deserted from No. 4 Regiment of Indian
National Army. The trusted officers like Col. P.K. Sehgal, Lt. Yashin Khan, Lt.
Mohd. Sadiq, Lt. Gharib Singh, S.O. Abdul Hakim, and Lt. Sadeed also
deserted. On 4 April 1945, most of the personnel, including battalion
commander Khazin Shah had also deserted. Therefore, a great deal of alarm
and despondency prevailed among the officers and soldiers of the I.N.A.,
owing to the desertion of Lt. Yashin Khan and Lt. Khazin Shah. On 8 April 1945,
Burmese Défense Army (B.D.A.) revolted against Japanese. Before B.D.A.
revolt, Bose met Kagawa to get the sum of loan from Southern Region
Development Bank (NAMPATSU) increased double as Kagawa had Okayed.
Bose also wanted the Nippon Army to give Indian rupees and arms, if possible,
to Indian members who would remain in Burma after British occupation. Right
after B.D.A. revolt, Kagawa met Subhash several times whenever any
change took place in the war situation in Burma. Kagawa was trying to
persuade Bose to make up his mind to withdraw from Rangoon as soon as
possible because the British forces were advancing towards Rangoon. But
Bose was determined to stay in Rangoon in the midst of his troops and face
the British force there and perish, if necessary. For a week, his ministers and
high-ranking officers of the Azad Hind Fauj persuaded him to leave Burma
and to continue the struggle from elsewhere. Netaji left Rangoon on April 24
by road. It took him three weeks to cover the distance of 300 odd miles to
Bangkok.
Up to the last of April 1945, the situation was developing fast against
the Axis powers. Magawe was occupied by Britishers on 18 April 1945. On 7
May 1945, one million German troops surrendered. Therefore, Bose met
Isoda and Kagaa to ask them to make arrangements for petrol and mobile
oil. In June 1945, while in Singapore, Subhash had foreseen that the defeat
of the Japanese was a matter of time only. Therefore, he requested the
Japanese to permit him to move his Provisional Government and a part of
the Indian National Army to Japan proper or China. The Southern Army
headquarters of Japanese military passed this proposal in turn to Tokyo. It is
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said that Lt. Gen. Shidei, Vice-Chief of staff of the Southern Army
headquarters opposed this permission on the ground that without Bose I.N.A.
in Malaya, Siam would not only disintegrate but would become an
administrative embarrassment at a juncture whom it was least desired.
Again, in July 1945, when the situation was fast deteriorating for the
Japanese, Bose sought permission this time to enter the U.S.S.R via
Manchuria with a few selected members of his movement. But Tojo, a
personal friend of Subhash Chandra Bose, was no longer in power; Bose
was not meeting with success. Bose, therefore, decided to proceed to Tokyo
himself to try and arrange his passage into Russia.
According to J.K. Bhonsle, another reason for Bose’s trip to Tokyo was
to try to arrange a separate surrender and treaty for the I.N.A. Bose had also
decided that in case the Japanese Government did not agree to taking up
his case with Russia, he himself would try to get to Shanghai from there to
try to contact the Russians through the Chinese communists. Failing both
these alternatives, Bose had decided to surrender himself to the Americans
and not to the British at any cost. Bose was certain that once the
Russians agreed to take him, they would give him all necessary protection.
He also thought that in the event of an Anglo-American split with Russia
which he definitely foresaw, he might be of some service to the Russians
and thus further the cause of his own country. With the dropping of the
atomic bombs on Hiroshima on 6 August and Nagasaki on 9 August 1945
and the Japanese offer to surrender if the status of the Emperor remained
unchanged, Bose finally had to face up to the end of the war and the end of
his ties to Japan. August 10 also marked the entry of the U.S.S.R. into the
Pacific war on the side of the Allies. Japanese were unhappy with his
efforts to reach out to the Soviets when the two nations were still observing
their neutrality pact. Bose wanted to become a Russian prisoner because
they were the only one who would resist the British. According to the
Japanese official namely Negishi, once Bose had told him, “My fate is with
them (Russians)”. But Japan denied this also. It was in view of this that
Subhash Chandra Bose left Singapore on 16 August 1945. On his way, he
stopped at Bangkok where he took a formal farewell. He arrived in Saigon
on 16 August 1945 and on 17 August 1945, Lt. Gen Isoda came there from
Bangkok to bid Bose farewell. On 18 August 1945 Bose and others,
including Habib-ur-Rehman met with an accident at Taikoku.

Self -Assessment Questions

a. Who was Mohan Singh?

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b. What were the actions taken by Rash Behari Bose for the creation of
Indian National Army?

c. Who was theCommander of the I.N.A. after Mohan Singh?

d. When the new I.N.A. was formally re-organized?

14.4. Indian National Army Trials

After the surrender of Indian National Army, the twenty thousand soldiers
were interrogated and transported back to India. Those who appeared to have
been persuaded or misled by Japanese or I.N.A. propaganda – classified as
‘Whites’ and ‘Greys’ – were either released or rehabilitated in the army. But a
few of them at least – the most committed and categorised as ‘Blacks’– were to
be court martialled. Not to try them would be to give indication of weakness; and
to tolerate ‘treason’ would be to put the loyalty of the Indian army at risk. Ten
trials took place and in the first and most celebrated one at Red Fort in
Delhi, three officers – P.K. Sahgal, G.S. Dhillon and Shah Nawaz Khan – were
charged of treason, murder and abetment of murder. The public trial was
expected to reveal the horrors that these I.N.A. men had perpetrated and that
the government hoped, would swerve public opinion against them. The
government had completely miscalculated the political fallout of the I.N.A.
trials. The details of the I.N.A. campaign were revealed every day before the
Indian public and these officers appeared as patriots of the highest order – not
by any means traitors. The demand for discontinuing the trials grew stronger
day by day. The Congress leaders could hardly ignore this issue. In a Congress
meeting held in September 1945, it was decided to defend the accused in the
I.N.A. trial – the ‘misguided patriots’ and announced the formation of a Defence
Committee, consisting of some legal luminaries of the day like Tej Bahadur
Sapru, Bhulabhai Desai, Asaf Ali and also Jawaharlal Nehru, donning the
barrister’s gown after about a quarter of a century. Nehru and other Congress
leaders addressed numerous public meetings in which two issues figured
prominently: one was the government excesses and the martyrs of 1942
and the other was I.N.A. trial.

The first trail opened on 5 November and continued for two months,
and in course of that time India erupted into ‘a mass upheaval’ as described
by Nehru. A unified sentiment has been manifested by various divergent
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sections of the population. There were many factors that led to this mass
upsurge. The trial took place at Red Fort which appeared to be the most
authentic symbol of British imperial domination, as here took place in
1858 the trial of Bahadur Shah II, the last Mughal Emperor and the acclaimed
leader of the 1857 revolt. Along with that, its reports appeared in the press,
leading to more awareness and to some extent more emotionalization of the
sacrifices made by the I.N.A. soldiers. All political parties like the Congress, the
Muslim League, the Akali Dal etc. wanted the trials to be discontinued.
Individual communists also participated in the demonstrations which showed the
signs of communal harmony. An I.N.A. week was celebrated between 5 and
11 November, while the I.N.A. Day was observed on 12 November in cities
across the country. People participated in the campaign, attended protest
meetings, donated money to the I.N.A. relief fund, closed shops and other
commercial institutions. Coorg, Baluchistan and Assam are also involved in
this movement. On 7 November violence erupted, when the police opened
fire on the crowd at a protest demonstration in Madura. From 21 to 24
November, riots broke out in various parts of the country. American and
British military establishments were attacked first, then the rioting took a
general anti-British tone, with students clashing with the police and being
joined later by striking taxi drivers and labourers. 33 people died and 200
people got injured in three days. The Calcutta riots followed skirmishes in
Bombay, Karachi, Patna, Allahabad, Banaras, Rawalpindi and many more.
In the trial, the defence tried to argue that people fighting for
freedom of their country could not be tried for treason. But despite that, they
were found guilty as charged, but the commander-in-chief remitted their
sentence and set them free on 3 January 1946. The three officers came out
of the Red Fort to a hero’s welcome at public meetings in Delhi and Lahore.
It was celebrated as a moral victory against the British. After this, second
trial opened on 4 February in which Captain Abdur Rashid defended by
Muslim League Defence Committee rather than by the Congress. But seven
years rigorous imprisonment was given which sparked off another explosion
in Calcutta between 11 and 13 February. It was initiated by student wing of
the Muslim League, joined by the members of the communist led Student
Federation and industrial workers. Demonstrations were organised and large
meetings were addressed by League, Communists and Congress leaders. A
general anti- British sentiment pervaded the city, which was paralysed by
transport strikes, industrial action and pitched street battles with British
troops. 84 people got killed, 300 people got injured and order was restored
after three days. The spirit of revolt spread to east Bengal and soon affected
the other parts of the country. British had seen a mass upheaval in the
country and also seen the impact of the I.N.A. trials on the loyalty of the
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army. General Auchinleck, the commander-in-chief, remitted the sentence
of the three I.N.A. officers because any attempt to force the sentence would
have led to chaos in the country at large and probably to mutiny and
dissention in the army culminating in its dissolution. The growing political
consciousness among the army personnel during and after the war had
already been a cause of concern for the authorities. What further contributed
to it was the I.N.A. trial and the growing sympathy for the I.N.A. soldiers who
were almost universally regarded as patriots, rather than traitors.

14.5. SUMMARY
Students, in this lesson we have dealt with formation of Indian National
Army and its activities in shaping Indian national movement. Subhash Chandra
Bose played an active role in the Indian National Army for achieving India’s
freedom. Its organization was an ominous indication that the British could no
longer count upon the unflinching loyalty of the Indian sepoys in maintaining
their hold in India. The popular agitation against the I.N.A. trials and the Naval
Mutiny, were alarming symptoms from the British point of view. Thus, a new
military factor emerged in the formulation of British policy towards India’s
struggle for freedom. Subhash Chandra Bose and I.N.A. could not bring the
independence of India through their struggle but certainly they brought it nearer.

14.6. REFERENCES
Bipan Chandra, Nationalism and Colonialism in Modern India, Delhi: Orient
Longman, 1979.
Harkirat Singh, The INA Trial and the Raj, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers,
2003.
Sumit Sarkar, ModernIndia1885-1947, Delhi: Pearsons Education India, 2014.
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern
India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.

14.7. FURTHER READINGS

Joyce Chapman Lebra, The Indian National Army and Japan, Singapore:
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 20014.
Hari Har Das, SubhashChandraBose and the Indian Struggle, New
Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1983.
Subash Bose, IndianStruggle, Netaji Research Bureau, Calcutta, 1964.

14.8. MODEL QUESTIONS

1. Discuss the role of Subhash Chandra Bose in the reorganization of Indian
National Army?

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2. Write a detailed note on Indian National Army.
3. Explain the foundation and reorganization of Indian National Army?
4. Examine the INA trials critically. What was the impact?

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LESSON 15

COMMUNAL STRANDS; MUSLIM LEAGUE AND

HINDU MAHASABHA; LAST PHASE OF THE
STRUGGLE; FREEDOM AND PARTITION; WHY
CONGRESS AND GANDHI ACCEPT PARTITION

Structure
15.0. Objectives
15.1. Introduction
15.2. Communal Strands: Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha
15.3. Last Phase of the Struggle Leading India towards the Freedom and
Partition
15.4. Why Congress and Gandhi Accept Partition
15.5. Summary
15.6. References
15.7. Further Readings
15.8. Model Questions

15.0. OBJECTIVES
Students, after reading this chapter you will be able to:
● know how the communal and separatist trend of thinking grew among
the Hindus and the Muslims?
● know the different factors responsible for the freedom and partition of
the country.
● know why Congress and Gandhiji accepted Partition.

15.1. INTRODUCTION
Students, the Indian National Movement aimed at achieving the unity of
all Indian people, but communalism sought to divide them along religious
lines, by creating and spreading false barriers of religious communities,
religious interests and ultimately religious nations also. This lesson will try to
tell you how the communal politics started developing in the last decades of
the nineteenth century in India and the active role played by the All India
Muslim League and the All India Hindu Mahasabha intensifying the
communal tensions. This lesson further traces the chain of events that
culminated into first the demand for separate land of Pakistan and the
outbreak of World War II and British unilateral declaration that India is
party to war, without consultation with Indian leaders in particular and its
people in general, made the Congress to demand for the self-government or
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Swaraj. International situation was getting worse for the Allied powers,
therefore, the British had to offer a number of constitutional proposals to enlist
Indian support in its war efforts leading India towards its partitioned freedom.
So, in this chapter you will learn about different constitutional proposals offered
by the British to pacify Indians and to seek their support during the World War II
like August Offer (1940), Cripps Mission (1942), Wavell Plan (1945), Cabinet
Mission Plan (1946), and Mountbatten Plan (1947). This lesson also discusses
why Congress and Gandhiji accepted freedom.

15.2. COMMUNAL STRANDS: MUSLIM LEAGUE AND HINDU

MAHASABHA
Along with the rise of nationalism, communalism too made its
appearance around the end of the nineteenth century and posed the
biggest threat to the unity of the Indian people and the national movement.
Before we discuss the emergence and growth of communalism, it is
perhaps necessary to define the term. Communalism is basically an
ideology. Communalism or communal ideology consists of three basic
elements or stages, one following the other. First, communalism is the
belief that because a group of people follow a particular religion they have,
as a result, common secular, that is, social, political and economic
interests. It is a belief that in India religious groups like Hindus, Muslims
Sikhs and Christiansform different and distinct communities; that all the
followers of a religion share not only a commonality of religious interests
but also common secular interests; that there is, and can be, no such thing
as an Indian nation, but only a Hindu nation, or a Muslim nation and so
on; that India can, therefore, only be a mere confederation of religious
communities or the best they can do is to unite as communal leaders and
then serve the wider category of the nation or country. Second stage was
of liberal communalism, it believed in communal politics but liberal in
democratic, humanist and nationalist values. It was basically before 1937.
For example, organisations like Hindu Mahasabha, Muslim League and
personalities like M.A. Jinnah, M.M. Malviya, Lala Lajpat Rai after 1920s.
Third was the stage of extreme communalism, this had a fascist
syndrome. It demanded for a separate nation based on fear and hatred.
There was a tendency to use violence of language, deed and behaviour.
For example: Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha after 1937.
Communalism is not a remnant of, or survival from, the medieval period.
Though religion was an important part of people’s lives and they did sometimes
quarrel over religion, there was hardly any communal ideology or communal
politics before the 1870s. Communalism is a modern phenomenon. It had its
roots in the modern colonial socio-economic political structure.

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During the Revolt of 1857 Hindus and Muslims had fought shoulder to
shoulder. But after the suppression of the Revolt, the British officials particularly
took vindictive attitude towards the Muslims and chose to throw the cover of
responsibility on the Muslim aristocracy alone. It was because the British had
always regarded the Muslims as their archenemy in India due to the fact that
they (the British) had unseated them from power, and the fact that the
insurgents endeavoured to restore Bahadur Shah II to power convinced the
British enough to assume that the Muslim leaders were behind the planning and
leading of the uprising. Therefore, they hanged 27,000 Muslims in Delhi alone.
From now on the Muslims in general were looked upon with lots of suspicion.
But this attitude changed in the 1870's. With the rise of the national
consciousness amongst the Hindus (who unlike the Muslims were quick to
respond to the western education offered by the British and became pioneers of
Indian nationalism) the British statesmen grew apprehensive about the safety
and stability of their Empire in India. To check the growth of a united national
feeling in the country, they decided to follow more actively the policy of
'Divide and Rule' and to divide the people along religious lines, in other words to
encourage communal and separatist tendencies in Indian politics. For this
purpose they decided to come out as 'champions' of the Muslims and win
over to their side Muslim Zamindars, landlords, and the newly educated. They
also fostered other divisions in Indian society. They promoted provincialism by
talking of Bengali domination. They tried to utilise the caste structure to turn the
non-Brahmins against Brahmins and the lower castes against the higher castes.
In U.P. and Bihar, where Hindus and Muslims had always lived in peace, they
actively encouraged the movement of Banaras Hindus to replace Urdu (which
was jointly developed by the Hindus and Muslims) as a court language by Hindi.
Then in 1872-73, Urdu was replaced by Hindi in the subordinate offices in the
Central Provinces and in the Darjeeling district of Bengal; next in 1881 the
exclusive use of Hindi in Devanagari script replacing Urdu with its Persian
script altogether was introduced in Bihar. Such demands by the Hindus jolted
Muslims for the first time.
In the rise of the separatist tendency along communal lines Sayyid
Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) played an important role. However, initially,
Sayyid was a great advocator of Hindu and Muslim unity. He believed that
all religions had a certain underlying unity which could be called practical
morality. Believing that a person's religion was his or her private affair, he
roundly condemned any sign of religious bigotry in personal relations. He
was also opposed to communal friction. In fact, he considered both Hindus
and Muslims as one Qaum (nation), arguing that “The word Qaum is
used for the inhabitants of a country, even though they have
characteristics of their own”. Again, “By the word Qaum, I mean both
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Hindus and Muslims. That is the way in which I define the word Qaum”.
Appealing to Hindus and Muslims to unite, he said in 1883: “Now both of us
live on the air of India, drink the holy waters of the Ganga and Jumna. We
both feed upon the products of the Indian soil. We are together in life and
death, living in India both of us have changed our blood, the colour of our
bodies has become the same, our features have become similar; the
Musalmans have adopted numerous Hindu customs, the Hindus have
accepted many Muslim traits of conduct, we became so fused that we
developed the new language of Urdu, which was neither our language nor
that of the Hindus. Therefore, if we except that part of our lives which
belongs to God, then undoubtedly in consideration of the fact that we both
belong to the same country, we are a nation, and the progress and
welfare of the country, and both of us, depend on our unity, mutual
sympathy, and love, while our mutual disagreement, obstinacy and
opposition and ill-feeling are sure to destroy us”. Again, in 1884, Sayyid
Ahmad Khan had said: “Remember that the words Hindu and Mohammedan
are only meant for religious distinction otherwise all persons, whether Hindu
or Mohammedan, even the Christians who reside in this country, are all in
this particular respect belonging to one and the same nation. Then all these
different sects can be described as one nation, they must each and all unite
for the good of the country which is common to all”. Even though Hindus and
Muslims followed different religions, their economic and political interests
were the same. Even socially and culturally the Hindu and Muslim masses
as well as classes had developed common ways of life. A Bengali Muslim
and a Bengali Hindu had much more in common than a Bengali Muslim and
a Punjabi Muslim had. Moreover, Hindus and Muslims were being equally
and jointly oppressed and exploited by British imperialism.
Unfortunately, by 1887, Sayyid Ahmad Khan changed his stance and
turned anti-Hindu after the formation of the Indian National Congress. It was
mainly because none of the authoritative Hindu leaders paid heed to
Sayyid’s repeated warnings since 1870s against linguistic division and even
when the Congress came to be organized in 1885 in the name of an Indian
“nation”, it took no stance on the disruptive Hindi agitation. Encouraged by
the British, he began to talk of Hindu domination to prevent his followers
from joining the national movement. On 28 December 1887, he delivered
a remarkably intemperate speech at Lucknow against the Indian National
Congress by calling it essentially a party of Bengali Hindus who could not
best represent the viewpoint of a Muslim population, full of appeals to
regional, communal and casteist sentiments. He was wary of the rise of
Indian nationalism as he thought power would pass into the hands of the
Hindus alone. He advocated Muslims to have loyalty to the British. In his own

269
words, “We do not want to become subjects of the Hindus instead of the
subjects of the people of the Book”. He declared that if the educated Muslims
remained loyal to the British, the latter would reward them with the government
jobs and other special favours. It could hardly be a coincidence that he was
awarded a knighthood (Sir) within four days of the speech (on 1 January 1888)!
Two years later, in 1889, along with Theodore Beck, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan
organized the United Indian Patriotic Association as a counter to the
Congress. Once more he sought to emphasize loyalty to the British. In the
coming years acknowledging the educational and economic backwardness of
the Muslims and its numerical inferiority, he stood for equal representation for
Muslims and Hindus in the North-Western Provinces, for separate (communal)
electorates and weightage. Though not perceived at the moment, these
proposals at Shimla in 1906, and eventually sowed the “seed of Pakistan”, for
without separate electorates there would have been no Pakistan. He came to be
regarded as the father of the ‘Two- Nation Theory’ which says that Hindus and
Muslims cannot be one nation, leading to the Partition of the country in 1947.
The separatist and loyalist tendencies among a section of the
educated Muslims and the big Muslim Nawabs and landlords reached a
climax in 1906 when the All India Muslim League was founded at Dacca
under the leadership of the Aga Khan, the Nawab of Dacca, and Nawab
Mohsin-ul-Mulk. The Muslim League supported the partition of Bengal
(1905) and demanded special safeguards for the Muslims in government
services. Later, with the help of Lord Minto, the Viceroy, it put forward and
secured the acceptance of the demand for separate electorates (1909). The
separate electorates for Muslims, created by the colonial government in
1909 and expanded in 1919, crucially shaped the nature of communal
politics. Separate electorates meant that Muslims could now elect their own
representatives in designated constituencies. This created a temptation for
politicians working within this system to use sectarian slogans and gather a
following by distributing favours to their own religious groups. Religious
identities thus acquired a functional use within a modern political system;
and the logic of electoral politics deepened and hardened these identities.
Community identities no longer indicated simple differences in faith and
belief; they came to mean active opposition and hostility between
communities. However, while separate electorates did have a profound
impact on Indian politics, we should be careful not to over-emphasise
their significance or to see Partition as a logical outcome of their working.
Thus, while the Congress was taking up anti-imperialist economic and
political issues(Partition of Bengal, drain theory, etc), the Muslim League
and its reactionary leaders preached that the interests of the Muslims were
different from those of the Hindus. The Muslim League’s political activities

270
were directed not against the foreign rulers but against the Hindus and the
Congress. Hereafter, the League began to oppose every nationalist and
democratic demand of the Congress. It thus played into the hands of the
British who announced that they would protect the ‘special interests’ of the
Muslims. The League soon became one of the main instruments with which
the British hoped to fight the rising nationalist movement. To increase its
usefulness, the British also encouraged the Muslim League to approach the
Muslim masses and to assume their leadership. It is true that the nationalist
movement was also dominated at this time by the educated town-dwellers,
but, in its anti-imperialism, it was representing the interests of all Indians -
rich or poor, Hindus or Muslims. On the other hand, the Muslim League and
its upper class leaders had little in common with the interests of the Muslim
masses, who were suffering as much as the Hindu masses at the hands of
foreign imperialism. This basic weakness of the League came to be
increasingly recognised by the patriotic Muslims. The educated Muslim
young men were, in particular, attracted by radical nationalist ideas.
Unfortunately, with the exception of a few persons like Maulana Abul
Kalam Azad who were rationalists in their thinking, most of the militant
nationalists among Muslim young men also did not fully accept the modern
secular approach to politics. The result was that the most important issue
they took up was not political independence but protection of the holy places
and of the Turkish Empire. Instead of understanding and opposing the
economic and political consequences of imperialism, they fought imperialism
on the ground that it threatened the Caliph and the holy places. Even their
sympathy for Turkey was on religious grounds. Their political appeal was to
religious sentiments. Moreover, the heroes and myths and cultural traditions
they appealed to belonged not to ancient or medieval Indian history but to
West Asian history. It is true that this approach did not immediately clash
with Indian nationalism. Rather, it made its adherents and supporters
anti- imperialist and encouraged the nationalist trend among urban Muslims.
But in the long run this approach too proved harmful, as it encouraged the
habit of looking at political questions from a religious view point. In any case,
such political activity did not promote among the Muslim masses a modern,
secular approach towards political and economic questions.
The period between 1922 to 1926 had witnessed the rise of
communalism, which uprooted the brotherly relations between the Muslim
League and the Congress. The communal relations had reached such an
extent that even the Nehru Report rejected the Lucknow Pact which had
commented the Hindu-Muslim unity, and forced Jinnah, Maulana Shaukat Ali,
Mohammad Ali and many other influential Muslim nationalists to leave the
Congress. The settlement of the 'Minority Question’ was the corner-stone of

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Jinnah's and Mohammad Ali's political philosophies which they preached till
they lived. The League thereafter met at Allahabad in 1930 and for the first time
high-lifted its policy of securing a 'Muslim India' and declared emphatically
that it would not be content with any of the constitution that fails to guarantee
full Muslim representation on population basis in the Punjab and Bengal. The
League’s resolution of March 1940 demanded: that geographically contiguous
units are demarcated into regions, which should be so constituted, with such
territorial readjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the
Muslims are numerically in a majority as in the north-western and eastern zones
of India should be grouped to constitute “Independent States”, in which the
constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign. The League also began to
preach that, since the Hindus formed the larger part of the Indian population,
they would dominate the Muslims in case of the weakening or withdrawal of
British rule. He urged the Muslims to fight for their rights. Finally, on 15 August
India stood divided on communal lines.
The All-India Hindu Mahasabha under the leadership of Pandit Madan
Mohan Malaviya (1861-1946) and Lala Lajpat Rai, on the other hand, was set
up as a purely Hindu organization and it soon became a highly charged
communal political party. A brief history of Hindu Mahasabha is that Hindu
Sabha’s sprang up in Lahore in 1882 and local forerunners to the Mahasabha
had been sprouting across the country since the early decades of the 20th
century when the All India Muslim League was formed in 1906 and the British
announced separate electorates for Muslims under the Morley-Minto Reforms.
As a result of these developments, Hindu leaders realised the need to come
together to form an organisation that would protect India’s culture and religion,
which it took to be Hindu. By 1906 a Hindu Sabha was established in almost
each district of the Punjab and in few other towns of north India like Allahabad,
Lucknow, and Benares. In 1915, the all-India Hindu Mahasabha held its first
session in (Hardwar) UP. It was a part of the Congress and several Congress
leaders until 1930’s continued to participate in the annual session of the
Mahasabha but later because of its radical Hindu nationalist objectives, it
emerged as a strong critic of the Congress in the 1920s. Members of the
Mahasabha had virulently opposed the Lucknow Pact. In the post-Khilafat
period (1924-34) when India was in the grip of communalism (the Moplah
rebellion and the communal riots at Multan caused heavy losses to Hindus in
terms of life and property), soon began to antagonize the Indian Muslims in
various ways. The Mahasabhaites patronized the anti-Muslim movements
such as the Shuddhi and Sangathan with the aim of terrorizing and
converting Muslims back to Hinduism. The argument used by Malaviya and
Mahasabha extremists was that they were saving cows from slaughter by
Muslims at the same time trying to force the conversion of Muslims to

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Hinduism using the plea that most of India’s Muslim population had originally
been Hindus but had been forcibly converted to Islam during Muslim rule in
India. The Muslim leaders thought that most of the Hindu leaders of the
Congress party were also hostile to Muslims and in fact, they were
communalist at heart.
The emergence of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, as a leader of the
Mahasabha in the 1920s, gave a new boost to the organization. Savarkar,
though earlier had begun his ‘political career’ at the age of ten in 1893 by
throwing stones at a village mosque during the cow-killing riots. Savarkar
provided the organization with the ideology of Hindutva, which was to have
far- reaching consequences. In his book Hindutva, written in Andaman Jail in
1917, Savarkar expounded the idea of a Hindu Rashtra, state or nation. The
Hindu Mahasabha stressed that Hindustan had been the land of the Hindu
from time immemorial. It believed that in this holy land, the Hindus have
a right to live in peace as Hindus, and to legislate, to rule and to govern
themselves in accordance with the Hindu ideals and to establish by legal
means “a Hindu state based on Hindu culture and tradition so that Hindu
ideology and way of life have home land of its own”. The Mahasabha
claimed to comprise in its fold all those who called themselves Indians
irrespective of their religion of Indian origin. This implied that the Buddhists,
the Sikhs, the Jains would be regarded as Hindus while the Muslims, the
Jews, the Parsis and the Christians who believed in a religion of non-
Bhartiya origin are non-Hindus. This idea found increasing acceptance in the
1920s. In two sessions held in 1922 and 1923, the Mahasabha declared
itself as the defender of the Hindu community against the incursions of
Muslims organized under the Muslim League. The limited base of the
Mahasabha notwithstanding, its activities further vitiated relations amongst
elite Hindus and Muslims in north India and limited the capacity of the
Congress to negotiate with the League.
Savarkar’s ideology of Hindutva stimulated activities in Maharashtra
and indirectly influenced the establishment of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak
Sangh (RSS) in Nagpur in 1925 by K.B. Hedgewar, an associate of Moonje,
Tilak’s old follower. Inspired by the idea of a Hindu Rashtra, Hedgewar
argued that since ‘Hindu society’ had lived in the country ‘since times
immemorial’ and was the ‘national society’, and since the ‘same Hindu
people’ had built the ‘life-values, ideals and culture’ of the country, their
nationhood was ‘self-evident’. By 1940, the RSS had over 100,000 trained and
highly disciplined cadres pledged to an ideology of Hindu nationalism,
convinced that India was a land of the Hindus.
While addressing the All India Hindu Mahasabha in 1937, V.D.
Savarkar warned: “The Muhammadens are likely to prove dangerous to our

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Hindu nation and to the existence of a common Hindu state even if and when
England goes out. Let us not be stone blind to the fact that they as a
community still continue to cherish fanatical designs to establish a Muslim
rule in India”. They declared that Muslims were foreigners in India. Its
attitude towards the Hindu- Muslim relations strained its relations with
Congress and in 1937 it broke away from Congress because of Congress
policy of appeasement to the Muslims. V.D. Savarkar in his presidential
address to the Hindu Mahasabha in 1937 also expounded his two-nation
theory, when he said, “India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and
homogenous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main,
Hindus and Muslims, in India”. The Muslim League adopted the theory later.
The Congress, argues Jaffrelot, came to be haunted by a tussle
between two rival notions of nationalism, one that believed in composite
culture and held the nation above community, and the other—
expounded by the Mahasabha sympathizers in the Congress—that
upheld the idea of majority rule by Hindus and the subordination of
Muslims. Given the fact that the Congress often had to bow down or make
compromises with protagonists of the second group, Muslim leaders grew
weary and suspicious of the Congress real intent.
Ever since its inception, the Mahasabha’s role in the freedom struggle has
been rather controversial. While not supportive of British rule, the Mahasabha
did not offer its full support to the nationalist movement either, abstaining from
participating in the Civil Disobedience movement of 1930. Under the
stewardship of V.D. Savarkar, the Mahasabha was opposed to Gandhiji’s
overtures to hold meetings with Muslim League President Muhammad Ali
Jinnah and Congress’ efforts to integrate Muslims. When Congressmen were in
jail for having launched a movement asking the British to Quit India, Savarkar
wrote to the Viceroy offering support and Hindu Mahasabha members joined
provincial ministries in coalition with the Muslim League.

15.3. LAST PHASE OF THE STRUGGLE LEADING INDIA TOWARDS

THE FREEDOM AND PARTITION
It would be incorrect to see Partition as the outcome of a simple unfolding
of communal tensions. Communal discord happened even before 1947 but
it had never led to the uprooting of millions from their homes. Partition was a
qualitatively different phenomenon from earlier communal politics, and to
understand it we need to look carefully at the events of the last decade of the
British rule.
In 1937, elections to the provincial legislatures were held for the first
time. Only about 10 to 12 percent of the population enjoyed the right to vote.
The Congress did well in the elections, winning an absolute majority in five

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out of eleven provinces and forming governments in seven of them. It did
badly in the constituencies reserved for Muslims, but the Muslim League
also fared poorly, polling only 15.4 per cent of the total Muslim vote cast in
this election. The League failed to win a single seat in the North West
Frontier Province (NWFP) and could capture only two out of 84 reserved
constituencies in the Punjab and three out of 33 in Sindh. In the United
Provinces, the Muslim League wanted to form a joint government with the
Congress. The Congress had won an absolute majority in the province, so it
rejected the Muslim League proposal for a coalition government partly
because the League tended to support landlordism, which the Congress
wished to abolish, although the party had not yet taken any concrete steps
in that direction. Some scholars argue that this rejection convinced the
League that if India remained united, then Muslims would find it difficult to
gain political power because they would remain a minority. The League
assumed, of course, that only a Muslim party could represent Muslim
interests, and that the Congress was essentially a Hindu party. But Jinnah’s
insistence that the League be recognised as the “sole spokesman” of
Muslims could convince few at the time. Though popular in the United
Provinces, Bombay and Madras, social support for the League was still fairly
weak in three of the provinces from which Pakistan was to be carved out just
ten years later – Bengal, the NWFP and the Punjab. Even in Sindh it failed
to form a government. It was from this point onwards that the League
doubled its efforts at expanding its social support.
Gradually the demand of Pakistan was formalised. The name Pakistan
(from Punjab, Afghan, Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistan) was coined by a
Punjabi Muslim student at Cambridge, Choudhry Rehmat Ali, who in
pamphlets written in 1933 and 1935, desired a separate national status for
this new entity. No one took Rehmat Ali seriously in the 1930s, least of all
the League and other Muslim leaders who dismissed his idea merely as a
student’s dream. On 23 March 1940, the League moved a resolution
demanding a measure of autonomy for the Muslim-majority areas of the
subcontinent. This ambiguous resolution never mentioned Partition or
Pakistan. In fact Sikandar Hayat Khan, Punjab Premier and leader of the
Unionist Party, who had drafted the resolution, declared in a Punjab
Assembly speech on 1 March 1941 that he was opposed to a Pakistan that
would mean “Muslim Raj here and Hindu Raj elsewhere ... If Pakistan means
unalloyed Muslim Raj in the Punjab then I will have nothing to do with it”. He
reiterated his plea for a loose (united) confederation with considerable
autonomy for the confederating units.
The Indian independence struggle had become more extensive during the
period of the Second World War. The demand for the independence of India

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was gaining strength. The British rulers realized that it was necessary to take
serious cognizance of this situation. Accordingly, the British government began
preparing various plans for granting independence to India. Students, let us
discuss them.
In 1940, Lord Linlithgow was very eager to gain the support of Indians
for the war, so he promised that the British government would transfer the
power to the interim government established by the responsible Indian hands.
This proposal is known as ‘August Offer’. It was for the first time that the British
government promised to give Indians the right to frame their constitution.
Proposals by the British government were as follows:

● A representative Constituent Assembly would be framed to frame the

constitution of India after the conclusion of war.
● Dominion status would be granted to India.
● The Viceroy’s Council would be expanded quickly to incorporate more
Indians than British.
● However, defence, finance, home affairs, minority rights, treaties with
states, all republic of India services etc. will remain in the hands of British
government.
● An Advisory War Council was to be established.
● The government assured the minorities that the power would not be
transferred to any system of government whose authority is directly
denied by large and powerful elements in Indian national life.
The Indian National Congress rejected this proposal at its meeting
held at Wardha in August 1940. It demanded complete freedom from
colonial rule. Jawaharlal Nehru said that “The dominion status concept is as
dead as a doornail”. On the other hand, the Muslim League favoured the
veto assurance given to it and the leaders of League also reiterated that
partition was the only solution to the deadlock between them and Congress.
In the context of widespread dissatisfaction that prevailed over the
rejection of the demands made by the Congress and dissatisfaction with the
Viceroy’s ‘August Offer’, at the meeting of the Congress Working Committee
in Wardha, Gandhiji revealed his plan to launch Individual Civil
Disobedience to affirm the right to free speech. Once again, the weapon of
Satyagraha found popular acceptance as the best means to wage a
crusade against the unwavering stance assumed by British. Vinoba Bhave,
a follower of Gandhiji, was selected to initiate the movement. Sardar
Vallabhai Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Brahma Dutta also participated in
Gandhiji’s call for Individual Civil Disobedience. It encouraged many to
initiate fiery protests all over the country. Anti-war speeches reached in all
corners of the country. The Satyagrahis, who were requesting their fellow

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Indians not to support Britain in its war campaign, were arrested. Around
23,000 Satyagrahis were arrested. On 3 December 1941, the Viceroy
ordered the release of all Satyagrahis, who were arrested in connection with
the protests. The acquittal order was passed with a hope of gaining Indian
support in the war as the situation in Europe had become critical after
Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour.
In March-April 1942, a mission headed by Stafford Cripps was sent to
India with constitutional proposals similar to August Offer to seek Indian support
for the World War II because of the reverses suffered by Britain in South-East
Asia, the Japanese threat to invade India seemed real now and Indian support
became crucial. There was also mounting pressure on Britain from the Allies
(USA, USSR and China) to sort out Indian problems on priority basis to
seek Indian cooperation. Indian nationalists had agreed to support the Allied on
a condition that substantial power was transferred immediately and complete
independence would be given after the war. Main proposals of the mission were
as following:
● An Indian Union with a dominion status would be set up.
● It would be free to decide its relations with the Commonwealth and free to
participate in the United Nations and other international bodies.
● After the end of the war, a Constituent Assembly would be convened to
frame a new constitution. Members of this Assembly would be partly
elected by the provincial assemblies through proportional representation and
partly nominated by the princes. Hence, all members would be Indians.
● The British government would accept the new constitution subject to two
conditions: (i) any province not willing to join the Union could have a
separate constitution and form a separate union, and (ii) the new
constitution-making body and the British government would negotiate a
treaty to effect the transfer of power and to safeguard racial and religious
minorities. In the meantime, defence of India would remain in British
hands and the Governor-General’s powers would remain intact.

However, the Congress objected to: the offer of dominion status instead
of a provision for complete independence, representation of the princely
states by nominees and not by elected representatives, right to provinces to
secede as this went against the principle of national unity and this gave tacit
recognition to Muslim League's Pakistan demand, absence of any plan for
immediate transfer of power, absence of any real share in defence, the
Governor-General’s supremacy had been retained, and the demand that the
Governor-General be only the constitutional head had not been accepted.

The Muslim League rejected the proposals because it had given the

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greatest importance and priority to the creation of single Indian Union. It did not
like the machinery for the creation of a Constituent Assembly and the procedure
to decide on the accession of provinces to the union; and stated that the
proposals denied the Muslims the right to self-determination and the creation of
Pakistan. The League reaffirmed its conviction that “The only solution of India’s
constitutional problem is the partition of India into independent zones”. Also, it is
important to note here that the League was afraid that after the withdrawal of
the British, the Muslims would not get their due. It was only in the presence
of the British government that they could get their grievances secured. This
fear of the League continued and nothing was done by the Congress to allay
their fear. To say that the League was opposed to the Independence of India
is wrong. It only wanted the safety and security of Muslims In India along with
the Independence of India.
Cripps could not persuade them, as he did not get either the
cooperation of the Viceroy or the support of his Prime Minister. It is also argued
that Churchill did not sincerely wish the mission to succeed; he merely wanted
to show the world and more particularly, his allies that something was being
done to resolve the Indian political problem. Further, the incapacity of Cripps to
go beyond the draft declaration and the adoption of a rigid “take it or leave it”
attitude added to the deadlock. The procedure of accession was not well-
defined. It was not clear as to who would implement and interpret the treaty
affecting the transfer of power. Talks broke down on the question of the
Viceroy’s veto. But although a failure, the mission signified an important shift in
British policy. It announced Indian independence after the war, within or outside
the empire, to be the ultimate goal of British policy; and that unity would no
longer be a precondition for independence. It was on these two essential
conceptual pillars that post-war British policy of decolonisation was to evolve,
although in 1942 there was not yet any political consensus on them. The
failure of the mission prepared the ground for a total confrontation between the
Raj and the Congress.
As a result, Gandhiji decided to initiate his third and final mass based
movement against the British in the middle of the Second World War. The
British must quit India immediately, he told them. To the people he said, “do
or die” in your effort to fight the British – but you must fight non-violently.
Gandhiji and other leaders were jailed at once but the movement spread. It
specially attracted peasants and the youth who gave up their studies to join
it. Communications and symbols of state authority were attacked all over the
country. In many areas the people set up their own governments. The first
response of the British was severe repression. By the end of 1943 over
90,000 people were arrested, and around 1,000 killed in police firing. In
many areas orders were given to machine-gun crowds from airplanes. The
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rebellion, however, ultimately brought the Raj to its knees.
The Second World War had caused many socio-economic problems in
the British Empire, especially when it came to maintaining their overseas
colonies. Thus, the British government saw it fit to grant India the freedom it had
been demanding for so long. In addition, the Quit India Movement and an
increase in revolutionary activity only made the British position in India tenuous
at best.
During the Second World War, the British government, under the viceroyalty
of Lord Linlithgow had said that any move towards an Indian statehood would
be possible only if the Congress and the Muslim League resolve their
differences. The League was increasingly demanding a separate nation of
Pakistan for the Muslims whereas the Congress was against the partitioning of
the country. To break this deadlock between the two major political parties in
India, C. Rajagopalachari, Congress member who was close to Gandhiji,
proposed a set of plans called the C.R. Formula or Rajaji Formula (1944).
This was the first acknowledgement by a Congressman about the inevitability of
the partition of the country and a tacit acceptance of Pakistan. It provided that
the Muslim League would join hands with the Congress to demand
independence from the British. Both parties would cooperate and form a
provisional government at the centre. After the war, a commission would be
entrusted with the task of demarcating those areas with an absolute majority
of Muslims and a plebiscite to be held in those areas where all the inhabitants
(Muslims and non-Muslims) would vote based on adult suffrage whether to form
a separate sovereign nation or not. In case of partition, joint agreements to be
made for the safeguarding of defence, communications and commerce. The
above terms to come to fruition only if Britain transfers full powers to India.
It was in 1944, Gandhiji and Jinnah held talks on the basis of the Rajaji
Formula. The talks were a failure as Jinnah had objections to the proposal:
he wanted the Congress to accept the two-nation theory. He did not want
the entire population of the Muslim majority areas to vote on the plebiscite,
but only the Muslim population in those areas. He was also against the idea
of a common centre. Also, Jinnah wanted separate dominions to be created
before the English left India. The Sikhs also looked upon the formula
unfavourably because the formula meant a division of Punjab. Although the
Sikhs were a big chunk of the population, they were not in the majority in
any of the districts. The Congress, which was hitherto opposed to the
partition of the country was willing to give some concessions to get the
League on board for talks for independence, but the League was more
interested in Pakistan than freedom.
Lord Wavell, who became the Viceroy in 1943, was charged with
presenting a formula for the future government of India that would be

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acceptable to both the Indian National Congress and the all-India Muslim
League, allowing for a smooth transition of power. Lord Wavell was
considered an apt person for this task as previously he had been the
Commander-in-Chief of the Indian army and thus had a better understanding
of the Indian situation. In March 1945, Wavell visited London and discussed
his ideas with the British government and finally convinced Churchill of the
desirability of a Congress-League coalition government in India as a pre-
emptive measure to forestall the political crisis he predicted after the war.
He, therefore, convened a conference at Shimla and invited 21 political
leaders including Gandhiji and Jinnah to Shimla, the summer capital of
British India to discuss the Wavell Plan on 25 June 1945. The Wavell
Plan proposed the following:
● The Viceroy’s Executive Council was to have all Indian members
except the Viceroy himself and the Commander-in-Chief.
● The Council was to have a ‘balanced representation’ of all Indians
including ‘caste-Hindus’, Muslims, depressed classes, Sikhs, etc.
Muslims were given 6 out of 14 members which accounted for more than
their share of the population (25%).
● The Viceroy/Governor-General would still have the power of veto but its
use would be minimal.
● The foreign affairs portfolio would be transferred from the Governor-
General to an Indian member.
● The defence would be handled by a British general until the full
transfer of power was made.
The conference was a failure because the League and the Congress
could not settle their differences. Jinnah further wanted some effective
safeguards other than the Viceroys veto to protect Muslim interests from
majority decisions, i.e., insisted that only League members could be the Muslim
representatives in the council, and opposed to the Congress nominating
Muslim members. This was because Jinnah wanted the League to be the sole
representative of Muslims in India. Congress refused to accept it, for that would
amount to an admission that Congress was a party only of the caste Hindus.
Ironically, at that time, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was the Congress President!
Wavell called off the meeting, as a coalition government without the League
would not work.
The failure of the Wavell Plan and the Shimla conference was a
watershed moment for the Indian independence struggle. All steps taken to
prevent partition had been met with failure, meaning that it was inevitable.
After the failure of the Wavell plan, the British government made another
attempt to solve the constitutional problem of the country. After the war was
over, general elections were held in England and the Labour government was
280
elected in Britain. This new government was intent on giving independence to
India without much delay and sent the Cabinet Mission with that purpose. The
Labour ministry sent a three-member mission, the Cabinet Mission, to India in
March 1946 to negotiate the terms of transfer of power. The Cabinet Mission
was headed by Sir Pethick Lawrence, the Secretary of State for India, and
included Sir Stafford Cripps, the President of the Board of Trade, and first Lord
Admiralty A.V. Alexander. The mission had two main tasks— to discuss the
principles and procedures of framing a new constitution in order to grant
independence to India and to form an interim government on the widest
possible agreement among political parties to facilitate the transfer of power.
The mission spent some 3 weeks to discuss with the leaders of various
political parties, but could not arrive at any agreed solution. So, finally it
announced its own recommendations on 16 May 1946.
● The Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 proposed that there shall be a union
of India which was to be empowered to deal with the defence, foreign
affairs and communications.
● It recommended an undivided India and turned down the Muslim
League’s demand for a separate Pakistan. The Cabinet Mission
restricted the communal representation.
● It provided that all the members of the interim cabinet would be
Indians and there would be minimum interference by the Viceroy.
● It also provided for the formation of the Constituent Assembly on
democratic principle of population.
● An interim government would be formed at the centre with 14
members. For the time being, the Viceroy would reconstitute his executive
council consisting of representatives of all communities.
● It recognized Indian right to cede from the Commonwealth.
● The Union would have its own executive and legislature composed of
members elected by all provinces.
● The Union government and its legislature were to have limited powers,
dealing with finance, foreign affairs and communications. The Union
would have powers necessary to raise the finances to manage the
above mentioned subjects. Thus, the Cabinet Mission Plan proposed
a weak centre.
● The provinces would enjoy full autonomy for all subjects other than the
Union subjects.
● The princely states would retain all subjects and all residuary powers.
● A Constituent Assembly was to be elected by provincial assemblies by
proportional representation (voting in three groups- General, Muslims,
Sikhs). This Constituent Assembly would be a 389 member body with
provincial assemblies sending 292, Chief Commissioner’s provinces
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sending 4, and princely states sending 93 members. Each province
was allotted a total number of seats in proportion to its population.
● The representation of the provincial legislatures was to be broken up
into 3 sections. However, a province could leave any group and join
another by a majority of votes.
● Section A: Madras, UP, Central Provinces, Bombay, Bihar and
Orissa (Hindu majority provinces).
● Section B: Punjab, Sind, NWFP, Baluchistan (Muslim majority
provinces).
● Section C: Assam and Bengal. (Muslim majority provinces).

The Cabinet Mission Plan rejected the idea of separate Pakistan for the
following reasons:
i. The establishment of Pakistan would not solve the problem of
communal minorities.
ii. There was no justification for including within Pakistan the non-
Muslim districts.
iii. The princely states would find it difficult to decide which Union to join.
iv. The armed forces, transportation, telegraph and other services were
built for the whole country and partition would just increase problems.

The Congress accepted the proposals related to the Constituent

Assembly. But since, the Muslim League had been given disproportionate
representation; it rejected the idea of the interim government. Congress also
rejected the idea of a weak centre and division of India in small states.
Congress was against decentralization and the idea was to have a strong
centre. The Muslim League approved the plan on 6 June 1946 because it felt
that the grouping of Muslim majority provinces in a way meant the formation of
Pakistan.
In the election of July 1946, the Congress won with an overwhelming
majority (212 seats out of 296 seats) in elections to the Constituent
Assembly. The Congress success disappointed the Muslim League. On 27
July, the Muslim League council met at Bombay where Jinnah reiterated the
demand for Pakistan as the only course left open to the Muslim League. On
29 July, it rejected the Cabinet Mission Plan and called on the Muslims to
resort to ‘direct action’ to achieve the land of their dream Pakistan and to
prepare the Muslims to face dangers in future. 16 August 1946 was fixed as
‘direct action’ day. From 16 August 1946, the Indian scene was rapidly
transformed. There were communal riots on an unprecedented scale,
which left around several thousands dead. The worst hit areas were
Calcutta, Bombay, Noakhali, Bihar and Garhmukteshwar (United
282
Provinces).
At the invitation of Lord Wavell, Jawaharlal Nehru formed the Interim
Government on 2 September 1946. In October 1946 League agreed to join the
government and nominated its 5 members. League’s purpose behind it was to
fail the government. Liaqat Ali Khan refused to accept the leadership of
Jawaharlal Nehru. Soon after again communal riots broke out in different
parts of the country such as Bihar, U.P., Amritsar, Lahore, Multan and
Peshawar etc. Communal situation deteriorated day by day and the interim
government failed to control the situation. Now, there was no other alternative
than to accept the partition.
Therefore, Clement Attlee, the British Prime Minister made an
announcement on 20 February 1947 declaring the British intention of leaving
the Indian subcontinent. It said: a deadline of 30 June 1948 has been fixed for
transfer of power even if the Indian politicians had not agreed by that time on
the constitution. The British would relinquish power either to some form of
central government or in some areas to the existing provincial governments if
the Constituent Assembly was not fully representative, i.e., if the Muslim
majority provinces did not join. British powers and obligations vis- a-vis the
princely states would lapse with transfer of power, but these would not be
transferred to any successor government in British India. Mountbatten would
replace Wavell as the Viceroy. The statement contained clear hints of partition
and even balkanization of the country into numerous states and was, in
essence, a reversion of the Cripps offer.
In March 1947, Lord Mountbatten replaced Lord Wavell as the Viceroy
of India. The riots were rampant and chaos prevailed all over the country. All
the efforts by the government to ensure peace had failed. In May 1947,
Mountbatten came up with a Balkan Plan in which he advocated the division
of Punjab and Bengal and the handover of power to provinces and sub-
provinces, free to join one or more of the group constituent assemblies on
the basis of self-determination. The Interim Government was to remain in
force till June 1948 to oversee the arrangements. This plan was called the
‘dickie bird plan’. Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress when apprised of
the plan, vehemently rejected the plan because, in their view, a weak centre
and autonomous provinces would indeed lead to ‘balkanisation’ of India,
promoting ‘disruptive tendencies’ and chaos and disorder everywhere.
Jinnah, for his part, was not satisfied with just two Muslim-majority provinces
that would constitute a “truncated or mutilated, a moth-eaten Pakistan”.
Then after having long discussions with the leaders of the Congress
and the Muslim League, the Viceroy came up with another plan called the
3rd June plan. This plan was the last plan for India’s independence. It is also
called the Mountbatten Plan. According to the plan:
283
● The country was to be free but not united. India was to be partitioned and a
new state of Pakistan was to be created along with a free India.
● The plan provided for the partition of Bengal and Punjab.
● The Hindu majority provinces which had already accepted the existing
Constituent Assembly would be given no choice; while the Muslim
majority provinces, i.e., Bengal, Punjab, Sind, North-West Frontier
Province and Baluchistan would decide whether to join the existing or a
new and separate Constituent Assembly for Pakistan; this was to be
decided by the provincial assemblies.
● There would be a referendum in the North West Frontier Provinces, and
in case of Baluchistan, the Querta municipality and the tribal representatives
would be consulted.
● The princely states were given a choice to either join India or Pakistan.
● After the dominions were created, the British Parliament could not
enact any law in the territories of the new dominions.
● The British monarch would no longer use the title ‘Emperor of India’.
● The date for the transfer of power was fixed on 15 August 1947.
● To fix the international boundaries between the two countries, the
Boundary Commission was established chaired by Sir Cyril Radcliffe. The
Commission was to demarcate Bengal and Punjab into the two new
countries.
The nationalist leaders agreed to the partition of India in order to avoid
the large-scale blood-bath that communal riots threatened. On the
midnights of 14 and 15 August 1947, the dominions of Pakistan and India
respectively came into existence. Lord Mountbatten was appointed the first
Governor- General of independent India and Jinnah became the Governor-
General of Pakistan. Both the Congress and the League accepted this
plan and accordingly the British Parliament passed the Indian
Independence Act of 1947.

15.4. WHY CONGRESS AND GANDHI ACCEPTED PARTITION

The early nationalist accounts puts the blame for Partition exclusively
between the British and the Muslim League. The Congress tried to bring
under its umbrella all sections of Indian society, but separate electorates,
British policy of divide and rule, the intransigence of Jinnah and the
communal and reactionary grip over the League led to the Partition of the
subcontinent. By August 1947, the political situation became very complex.
With the British continuing to give the veto to Jinnah, the Congress, with
great reluctance, to avoid civil war, and because it was left with no
choice, “agreed” to Partition. The only alternative to Partition was imposing

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unity by force. P.D. Tandon, Congress leader and Speaker of the UP
Assembly, was an active proponent of this view. But Congress leaders
chose to accept Pakistan rather than compel unity.
A second strand argues that the acceptance of Partition by Congress
finally came under the 3rd June plan. But this acceptance was only the final act
of a long process of concessions to the League's intransigent demands for a
separate nation. With Cripps Mission in 1942 the autonomy of Muslim majority
provinces was accepted. Gandhiji went a step ahead and promised the right of
self-determination of Muslim majority provinces in his talks with Jinnah in 19415.
In June 1946, when Cabinet Mission presented its Plan, Congress tamely
accepted the possibility of the Muslim majority provinces (which formed Group B
and C under the Plan) setting up a separate Constituent Assembly but opposed
compulsory grouping to uphold the rights of NWFP and Assam who were not
willing to be a part of their respective Groups. The Congress demanded the
Grouping System to be optional leaving it on the wishes of the provinces to join
whichever Group they desired. By the end of the year Nehru said he would
accept the ruling of the Federal Court on whether the Grouping was
compulsory or optional. When the Cabinet, in December 1946, ruled that
Grouping was compulsory, Congress accepted without a word thus leaving
one of the strongest supporters of Congress, but now disillusioned, Khan
Abdul Gaffar Khan and his Pathan supporters, who had fought for India's
freedom with Congress with equal fervor, to the mercy of Pakistan. The
Congress, which was bitterly opposing Partition till now, officially referred to it
when a resolution was passed by the Congress Working Committee in
March 1947, that if ever the country was divided, then Punjab as well as
Bengal must also be partitioned. It finally conceded the League's demand
when it accepted the Partition under 3rd June Plan. Both Gandhiji and
Congress failed to notice the consequence of this appeasement. Muslims
were not the only minority in the country. There were others too who were
taking their lessons from Congress' attitude towards Muslim League. If
separate electorate could be accepted for Muslims, then why not for
backward classes questioned Ambedkar or if Muslims refused to live
amicably with Sikhs in Punjab then why should not Sikhs do the same with
them- questioned Master Tara Singh. The divisive tendencies were growing
everywhere and in this din the liberal, nationalist and freedom loving
elements found their voices being gagged. The country was divided after a
long and bloody series of violence which knows no parallel in the history of
mankind.
The argument has also been made that the Congress, particularly
Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel, were supporters of a strong state
and therefore preferred to have a smaller and more centralised state than a

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united but confederal India with the Muslim League. This was why they
rejected the Confederation that was recommended by the Cabinet Mission
that came to India in 1946. It is argued that the Partition of the
subcontinent was imposed by the central leaders of the Congress who
favoured a tighter grip over the provinces and a unitary conception of
nationalism. Because in the perception of many Congressmen and Hindu
nationalists, a weak centre in India had been responsible for repeated
invasions and British conquest and therefore the post- independence state
had to be strong enough to protect its citizens and provide for their well-
being.
The Congress was committed to undivided India where people of all
religions are treated equally. The main opponents of this idea were the Muslim
League, led by Jinnah and the Hindu Mahasabha, led by V.D. Savarkar. The
Muslim League opposed the idea of undivided India while the Hindu Mahasabha
opposed the idea of secularism. Both of them were involved in communal
activities, which ultimately led to the Partition of India. If indeed Jinnah and the
Muslim League did not want a separate state of Pakistan the leaders of the
Congress could not have forced it upon eighty million Muslims against their will.
To interpret this as the Congress being responsible for Partition is making a
travesty out of history.
Gandhiji, who had worked for communal harmony for decades,
nevertheless continued to oppose the idea of Partition till the end. Gandhiji was
firmly convinced that “The Pakistan demand as put forward by the Muslim
League is un-Islamic and I have not hesitated to call it sinful. Islam stands for
the unity and brotherhood of mankind, not for disrupting the oneness of the
human family. Therefore, those who want to divide India into possible warring
groups are enemies alike of Islam and India. They may cut me to pieces but
they cannot make me subscribe to something which I consider to be wrong”.
(Harijan, 26 September 1946, CWMG, Vol. 92, P.229.) Ironically, being a firm
believer in Ahimsa Gandhiji was willing to risk civil war. He wrote: “Let British
leave India to anarchy, rather than as a cockpit between two organised armies”
(Harijan, 20 July 1947).
He even suggested making Jinnah the Prime Minister to prevent
Partition. The Congress prevailed over Gandhiji who no longer remained as
dominant as he was in the past. Congress and Nehru ignored him and
approved the Partition plan. He was aware that he had lost the support of
large numbers of Hindus and that the Muslims no longer trusted him. The
Muslim voters had not reposed any faith in the Congress even during the
heyday of the Gandhian leadership of the Congress and it was unlikely that
in a period of great communal polarization, they would listen to him. The
Muslim mass contact movements had not succeeded because of the
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conservative social base of the local Congress party and its members. If
Gandhiji could not get the Muslims to join the Congress during the 1930s,
then there was little chance that any gesture of goodwill or any mass
movement could have brought a sizable Muslim following in 1946-47.
Now Gandhiji had no choice but reconciled to the changed Congress
as probably was the most judicious thing to do at that moment. He neither
rebelled nor undertook a fast unto death. When asked to explain his tacit
approval of a Partition he has never endorsed, Gandhiji responded by
saying that “Probably no one is more distressed than I am over the
impending division of India. But I have no desire to launch a struggle against
what promises to be an accomplished fact. I have considered such a division
to be wrong and therefore, I would never be a party to it. But, when the
Congress accepts such a division, however reluctantly, I would not carry on
agitation against that institution. Such a step is not inconceivable under all
circumstances”. So, though he was unhappy with Partition but he was not
willing to fight the party he had led for nearly three decades. Gandhiji further
stated that the decision had been arrived at after taking into account the
pulse of the people of all communities, be they Muslims, Sikhs or Hindus.
“The demand has been granted because you asked for it. The Congress
never asked for it. But the Congress can feel the pulse of the people”. For
Judith Brown, Gandhiji was a human being with saintly qualities who confronted
a historical situation in which he had been an important actor but was unable to
master. Moreover, the Partition of India was the outcome of several factors that
have been dealt with so far. No single individual brought it about or could have
averted it. This holds true for Gandhiji as well. Congress accepted Partition as
the most appropriate scheme to avoid further bloodshed and to have a
stronger India.

Self-Assessment Questions
a. What was C.R. Formula?
Answer.

b. Who wrote the book Hindutva?

Answer.

c. What was the Balkan Plan?

Answer.

d. Why was Cripps Mission rejected by the Muslim League?

Answer.

e. What did the Muslim League demand through its Resolution of 1940?
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Answer.

15.5. SUMMARY
Students, in this lesson we learnt about the rise and growth of
communalism in India, which emerged as a consequence of the emergence
of modern politics which marked a sharp break with the politics of the
ancient or medieval or pre- 1857 periods. Communal identities were
consolidated by a host of other developments in the early twentieth century.
During the 1920s and early 1930s tensions grew around a number of issues.
Acceptance of separate electorates during Lucknow Pact by all the
communities critically shaped the nature of communal politics. Further the
social movements such as Shuddhi and Sangathan movement by Hindu
Mahasabha and its concept of Hindutva intensified the communal tensions.
One of the characteristics of the various communal groups shared was their
tendency to adopt pro-government political attitudes. It is to be noted that
none of the communal groups and parties, which talked of Hindu and Muslim
nationalism, took active part in the struggle against foreign rule. They saw
the people belonging to other religions and the nationalist leaders as the
real enemies. The communal groups and parties also shied away from social
and economic demands of the common people, which were being
increasingly taken up by the nationalist movement. In this respect, they
increasingly came to represent the upper class vested interests. Failure of
talks at various important negotiations such as C. Rajagopalachari Formula,
Shimla Conference, Cabinet Mission, and the resulting communal violence
thereafter led to Partition of India. The Partition of the subcontinent came
about towards the end of colonial rule because of the failure of the
Congress and the League to come to a settlement. The British policy of
encouraging Muslim separatism and eagerness to withdraw from India after
the Second World War made the Partition more likely. The partition of India
not only changed the geography of the subcontinent; it at the same time left
a deep rooted impact on the hearts of people who had struggled for years to
see the dawn of peace with a new India.

15.6. REFERENCES

Ishita Banerjee Dube, A History of Modern India, Delhi: Cambridge

University Press, 20115.
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition, New Delhi: Orient
Blackswan, 20015.
Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the

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Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

15.7. FURTHER READINGS

David Page (et al.), The Partition Omnibus, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2002.
Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885-1947, New Delhi: Macmillan, 1983.
Bipin Chandra, India’s Struggle for Independence: 1857-1947, New
Delhi: Penguin Books, 1988.

15.8. MODEL QUESTIONS

1. Discuss in detail the rise and growth of communalism in special
reference to the role played by the Muslim League and Hindu
Mahasabha.
2. Critically analyse the factors that led to the Partition of British India.
3. Discuss those developments of the 1937-47 period that led to the creation
of Pakistan.
4. Why was Mountbatten's Plan finally accepted by the Congress?
5. Do you think Gandhiji was responsible for Partition? Give reasons.

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