MJ Hist
MJ Hist
MJ Hist
1. Indian National Movement (INM) was undoubtedly one of the biggest mass movements
modern society has ever seen.
2. It galvanized millions of people of all classes and ideologies
3. broadly practiced Gramscian theoretical perspective of a ‘war of position’ 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.
4. phases of ‘struggle’ alternated with ‘passive’ stages.
5. INM also used the constitutional space of the existing structure without getting co-opted by
it.
6. The movement popularized democratic ideas and institutions in India.
7. There was a demand for representative government on the basis of popular elections and
adult franchise.
8. It encouraged free expression of opinion.
9. Nationalists also fought for freedoms of the Press and that of expression and association.
10. Congress from 1937-39 greatly extended the scope of civil liberties.
11. The struggle emphasized the need for economic development.
12. pro-poor orientation which was strengthened by Gandhi and the leftists who adopted a
socialist outlook
13. It also moved towards a program of radical agrarian reform.
14. The movement was also committed to secularism.
Nationalist historiography:
1. Political activists such as Lala Lajpat Rai, A.C.Mazumdar, Pattabhi Sitaramayya,
Surendranath Banerjea
2. This school shows awareness to the exploitative nature of colonialism.
3. see the national movement as a movement of the people.
4. However, the weakness in this approach is that they tend to ignore the inner contradictions of
the Indian society both in terms of class and caste.
Marxist school:
1. R.Palme Dutt and A.R.Desai primarily led this school.
2. They clearly see the primary contradiction as well as the process of the nationin-the making,
and unlike the nationalists, they also take note of the inner contradictions of the Indian
society.
3. They see the bourgeoisie as playing the dominant role in the movement
Civil Rebellions:
1. The rebellions were led by deposed by rajas and nawabs and impoverished zamindars,
landlords and poligars.
2. The backbone of the rebellions constituted the rack-rented peasants, ruined artisans and
demobilized soldiers.
3. These were sudden, localized and often took place because of local grievances.
4. Between 1763 and 1856, there were hundreds of rebellions.
5. The first to rise were the soldiers of Bengal in the Sanyasi rebellion
6. Other uprisings in the Eastern part were the Chuar uprising in Bengal and Bihar
7. South: Raja of Vizianagram; Poligars of Tamil Nadu; Malabar and coastal Andhra; Dewan
Velu Thambi of Travancore;
8. In Western India: Chiefs of Saurashtra; the Kolis of Gujarat. In Maharashtra, there were the
Bhil uprisings; the Kittur uprising; Satara uprising and revolt by the Gadkaris.
9. In the North: Western U.P and Haryana; Bundelas of Jabalpur and Khandesh.
Causes:
1. changes introduced by the British in the economy, administration and the land revenue
system.
2. Intensifying demands for lad revenue caused widespread suffering.
3. nothing from the collected revenue was utilized to develop agriculture or for the benefit of
the cultivator.
4. Zamindars and Poligars lost interest over their land and revenue accruing from it.
5. Peasants: Increasing demand for revenue forced them to sell their lands or were pushed into
indebtedness.
6. The new courts and legal system gave a fillip for the rich to oppress the poor.
7. corruption prevailing at lower levels of police, judiciary and administration.
8. Imposition of free trade in India and levy of discriminatory tariffs against Indian goods in
Britain
9. The scholarly and priestly lost the patronage that they received from traditional rulers and
chiefs
Tribal Uprisings:
1. These uprisings were broad-based, involving thousands of tribals
2. The administration ended their relative isolation and brought them into the mainstream and
made the tribal chiefs as zamindars thereby subjecting them to the new land revenue system
and taxation.
3. There was an influx of Christian missionaries which was unwelcome.
4. Moneylenders, traders and revenue farmers who were outsiders were introduced as
middlemen. The middlemen took possession of their lands and were tools of exploitation.
5. Colonialism transformed their relationship with forest. placed restrictions on access to forest
products and forest lands.
6. It also refused shifting cultivation (jhum, podu etc) which was common practice.
7. There was extortion by the policemen and other petty officials.
8. The government agents extended the ‘begar’ system- make them perform unpaid labor.
9. Whereas the British were a drilled regiment with the latest weapons, the tribals were men and
women fighting in bands with primitive weapons such as spears, stones, axes, bows and
arrows.
10. Examples: Santhal hool: to expel the dikus or outsiders. Sido and Kanhu, the principal rebel
leaders claimed that Thakur (God) had communicated with them and told them to take up
arms and fight for independence. Around 60,000 Santhals were mobilized by 1854 forming
1500-2000 bands. The British realizing the scale of the rebellion declared Martial law and
mobilized tens of regiments. The rebellion was crushed ruthlessly.
11. The Khols of Chotanagpur rebelled from 1820 to 1837.
12. The Munda tribesmen rebelled with the leadership of BIRSA MUNDA during 1899-1900.
Munda declared he was a messenger of God and wanted to establish a Satyug in the place of
the current Kalyug
Other movements:
Mappila outbreaks in Malabar. Ramosi peasant force in Maharashtra led by Vasudev Balwant
Phadke. Kuka revolt in Punjab led by Baba Ram Singh.
Basic objectives:
1. Colonialists asserted that Indians could not be united as they were not a ‘nation’ but a mere
geographical expression
2. Thus the first objective was to weld Indians into a nation.
3. W.C.Banerji pointed, fuller development and consolidation of those sentiments of national
unity was a major objective.
4. Thus, in an effort to reach all regions, it was decided to rotate the Congress session among
different parts of the country and the President had to belong to a region other than where the
session was being held.
5. The second objective was to create a common political platform around which political
workers in different parts of the country could gather and conduct their political activities,
educating and mobilizing people on an all-India basis.
6. They had to take up grievances which Indians had ‘in common’ in relation ‘to the rulers’.
This was the primary reason why the INC did not take up any questions of social reform.
7. The idea was to go beyond the redressal of immediate grievances and organize sustained
political activity.
8. There was need for the internalization and indigenization of political democracy
9. It was necessary to evolve an understanding of colonialism as no ready anti-colonial
understanding was available. This was required as there could be no national struggle without
an ideological struggle clarifying the concept of we as a nation against colonialism as an
enemy.
10. The Congress was always conceived as a movement and not as a party.
Revolutionary Terrorism:
1. 1907 also brought the youth of Bengal to the path of individual heroism and revolutionary
extremism
2. were incensed at the ‘mendicancy’ of the moderates and also took to ‘politics of the bomb’
because of the extremists’ failure to give a positive lead to the people.
3. They failed to find forms through which their ideas could find practical expression.
4. they were willing to make greater sacrifices and undergo greater suffering, but they did not
know how to go beyond more vigorous agitation. They were unable to put before people new
forms of political struggle or mass movements.
5. As a result, they came to a political dead end by the end of 1907.
6. However, in the short time of their presence, the belief they held was ‘force must be stopped
by force’. As a result, the form of resistance that they put up was that of the Irish nationalists
and Russian nihilists.
7. They decided to organize the assassination of the unpopular British officials, strike a terror
into the hearts of the rulers, arouse patriotism in the people, inspire them and remove the fear
of authority from their minds
8. extremists failed in sense that they did not provide positive outlet for their revolutionary
energies and to educate them on the political difference between revolution based on activity
of masses and a revolution based on individual action
9. Abhinav Bharat was organized by V.D. Savarkar as a secret society of revolutionaries.
10. Many newspapers openly began to advocate revolutionary terrorism.
11. Prafulla Chaki and Khudiram Bose threw a bomb at a carriage thinking it was occupied by
Kingsford
12. Anushilan Samiti & Jugantar were other societies that came up. Their activities basically
took 2 forms- assassination of oppressive officials and informers and traitors from their own
ranks’ and committing dacoity to raise funds, buy bombs
13. Ultimately, between the years 1908-1918, 186 revolutionaries were killed or convicted. They
gradually petered out However, they did make a valuable contribution as, ‘they gave us back
the pride of our manhood’.
Government’s response:
1. The increasing popularity of the Home Rule Movement soon attracted the wrath of the
Government.
2. Government of Madras arrested Mrs. Besant and her associates, Mr. Wadia and Arundale in
June 1917.
3. Tilak decided to follow passive resistance or civil disobedience if government did not release
them.
4. The new Secretary of State, Montague made the historic MONTAGUE DECLARATION in
1917 – The policy of the Government is to increase association of Indians in every branch of
the administration and the gradual development of selfgoverning institutions, with a view to
the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the
British empire. The importance of this declaration lies in the fact that after this, the demand
for Home Rule or self-government could no longer be treated as seditious.
Lessons learnt:
1. prepared Gandhi for leadership of the Indian national struggle.
2. South Africa built his faith in the capacity of the Indian masses to participate in
3. had the opportunity of leading Indians belonging to different- religions, regions and
social classes.
4. He learnt that leading a movement involved facing the ire of not only his enemy but also
of one’s followers.
5. opportunity of evolving his own style of politics and leadership and for trying out new
techniques of struggle.
6. Gandhian phase and knew the strengths and weaknesses of it and was convinced that it
was the best method around.
Gandhiji and India:
1. arrived in India in January 1915. He spent the first two years traveling around the country
2. was convinced that the only method of political struggle that could be effective in India
was non-violent Satyagraha.
3. In the meantime, during 1917 and 1918, he was involved in three significant struggles: in
Champaran in Bihar, Kheda and Ahmedabad in Gujarat. They were all related to specific
local issues and were fought for the economic demands
4. These three struggles in fact demonstrated Gandhiji’s style of politics to the country at
large.
5. It also helped him understand the problems of the people at close quarters.
6. He also earned the respect and commitment of many political workers.
Champaran:
1. European planters had involved cultivators in agreements that forced them to cultivate
indigo on 3/20th of their holdings. This was known as the tinkathia system.
2. Towards the end of the 19th century German synthetic dyes made entry and indigo was
forced out of the market.
3. Raj Kumar Shukla, a local resident invited Gandhiji to investigate the problem.
4. Passive resistance or civil disobedience was offered to the unjust order.
5. Government also appointed a Commission of Enquiry to go into the issue with Gandhiji
as one of its members.
6. With evidence collected from 8,000 peasants, he convinced Commission that tinkathia
system had to be abolished.
Ahmedabad:
1. There was a dispute going on between the mill owners and the workers over a certain
plague bonus
2. workers insisted that it stayed as the cost of living had gone up since the World War.
3. Gandhiji persuaded the mill owners and workers to agree to arbitration by a tribunal but
the mill owners withdrew from the agreement later on.
4. After a thorough study he found out that the workers were justified in asking for the 35%
rise in the wages.
5. The strike began and he persuaded the workers not to use violence.
6. It had the effect of having the mill owners submit the whole issue to a tribunal. The strike
was withdrawn and the tribunal ordered the 35% rise which was demanded.
Kheda:
1. The peasants of Kheda district were in extreme distress due to a failure of crops and their
appeals for the remission of land revenue were being ignored by the Government.
2. Under the Revenue Code, if the crops were less than 1/4th of the normal yield, they were
entitled to a total remission of the land revenue.
3. Appeals and petitions failed and decision was taken to fight unto death
4. Gandhiji was joined by Vallabhai Patel, a young lawyer in touring the villages.
5. The cultivators were asked to take a solemn pledge that they would not pay the revenue
6. protest resulted in the Government issuing secret instructions directing that revenue was
to be paid only by those peasants who could pay.
Government Response:
1. Gandhi- Reading talks, to persuade Gandhiji to ask the Ali brothers to withdraw from their
speeches those passages that contained suggestions of violence; this was an attempt to drive a
wedge
2. Government came down heavily on the protestors Volunteer Corps were declared illegal,
Public meetings were banned, The press was gagged and Most of the leaders barring Gandhi
were arrested
in the twentieth century, the movements that emerged out of this discontent were marked by a
new feature: they were deeply influenced by and in their turn had a marked impact on the
ongoing struggle for national freedom
Mapilla Revolt:
1. Mappila were the Muslim tenants inhabiting the Malabar region where most of the landlords
were Hindus.
2. The Mappilas had expressed their resentment against the oppression of landlords during the
nineteenth century also.
3. Their grievances related to lack of any security of tenure, renewal fees, high rents, and other
4. Malabar Conference, held at Manjeri in 1920, for a government legislation regulating tenant-
Landlord relations.
5. The Manjeri conference was followed by the formation of a tenants’ association
6. Mappila movement merged with the ongoing Khilafat agitation- The leaders of the Khilafat –
Non- Cooperation Movement like Gandhiji, Shaukat Ali, and Maulana Azad, addressed
Mappila meetings.
7. Khilafat and Congress leaders were arrested. resulted in leadership passing into hands of the
local Mappila leaders.
8. However, things took a turn for the worse in August 1921, when the arrest of a respected
priest leader, Ali Musaliar, a Khilafat leader, sparked large scale riots
9. once the British declared martial law and repression began in earnest, the character of the
rebellion underwent a definite change. Many Hindus were seen by the Mappilas to be helping
the authorities
10. What began as an anti- government and anti- landlord affair acquired communal overtones.
11. communalization of rebellion completed isolation of the Mappilas from the Khilafat- Non-
Cooperation Movement.
12. British repression did the rest and by December 1921 all resistance had come to a stop.
13. From then onwards, the militant Mappilas were so completely crushed and demoralized that
till independence their participation in any form of politics was almost nil
14. peasant movements in UP and Malabar were thus closely linked with the politics at the
national level. In UP, the impetus had come from the Home Rule Leagues and, later, from the
NonCooperation and Khilafat movement
15. In Malabar, the Khilafat and tenants meetings merged into one.
16. But in both places, the recourse to violence by the peasants created a distance between them
and the national movement and led to appeals by the nationalist leaders to the peasants that
they should not indulge in violence.
17. can be interpreted as a sign of the fear of the middle class or bourgeois leadership that the
movement would go out of its own ‘safe’ hands into that of supposedly more radical and
militant leaders of the people.
18. Such concern could possibly be because of the desire to protect the peasants from the
consequences of violent revolt.
Bardoli Satyagraha:
1. The no tax movement that was launched in Bardoli taluq of Surat district in Gujarat in 1928
2. The movement sparked off in January 1926, when the authorities decided to increase the land
revenue by 30 percent.
3. Bardoli Inquiry Committee was set up to go into the issue- It found the increase to be
unjustified.
4. This was followed by a campaign in the Press, the lead being taken by Young India and
Navjivan edited by Gandhiji
5. Patel was ideally suited for leading the campaign. A veteran of the Kheda Satyagraha, the
Nagpur Flag Satyagraha, and the Borsad Punitive Tax Satyagraha, he had emerged as a
leader of Gujarat who was second only to Gandhiji.
6. His capacities as an organizer, speaker, indefatigable campaigner, inspirer of ordinary men
and women were already known, but it was the women of Bardoli who gave him the title of
Sardar.
7. Under Patel the peasants resolved to refuse payments of the revised assessment
8. Patel set up 13 chhavanis or workers camps in the taluqa.
9. Bardoli Satyagraha Patrika was brought out to mobilize public opinion.
10. An intelligence wing was set up to make sure all the tenats followed the movement’s
resolutions.
11. Special emphasis was placed on the mobilization of women. As a result, women often
outnumbered men –
12. Students were another special target and they were asked to persuade their families to remain
firm.
13. The enquiry, conducted by a judicial officer, Broomfield, and a revenue officer, Maxwell,
came to the conclusion that the increase had been unjustified, and reduced the enhancement
to 6.03 per cent.
14. during the 1930’s, the peasant awakening was influenced by the Great Depression in the
Industrialized countries and the Civil Disobedience Movement which took the form of no-
rent, no- revenue movement in many areas.
15. Also, after the decline of the active phase movement (1932) many new entrants to active
politics started looking for suitable outlets for the release of their energies and took to
organization of peasants.
Governments Reaction:
1. Seeing the emerging integration of the Akali movement with the national movement, the
government changed its strategy- it decided to follow a two-pronged policy.
2. To win over or neutralize the Moderates and those concerned purely with religious
reforms, it promised and started working for legislation which would satisfy them.
3. It decided to suppress extremist or the anti-imperialist section of the Akalis in the name
of maintaining law and order.
4. However, the Akalis, too, changed their policy- they extended the scope of their
movement to completely root out Govt. interference in their religious places and began to
see their movement as an integral part of national struggle.
5. SGPC passed a resolution in favour of non-cooperation
Keys Affair:
1. A major victory was won by the Akalis in the ‘Keys Affair’ in October 1921.
2. The Government made an effort to keep possession of the keys of the Toshakhana of the
Golden Temple. The Akalis immediately reacted, and organized massive protest
meetings;
3. The Government retaliated by arresting the prominent, militant nationalist leaders of the
SGPC like Baba Kharak Singh and Master Tars Singh.
4. But, instead of dying down, the movement began to spread to the remotest rural areas and
the army.
5. The Non-Cooperation Movement was at its height in the rest of the country forcing the
Government not to confront Sikhs on a religious issue- It released all those arrested in the
‘Keys Affair’ and surrendered the keys of the Toshakhana to Baba Kharak Singh.
6. Akali Movement made a massive contribution to political development of Punjab. It
awakened the Punjab peasantry.
7. The movement encouraged a certain religiosity which would be later utilized by
communalism.
8. Once the Gurdwara reform had taken place the Akali Movement got divided into three
streams: Moderate pro- Government men- went back to loyalist politics and became a
part of the Unionist Party. Nationalist persons who joined the mainstream nationalist
movement, becoming a part of the Gandhian. The third stream, which kept the title of
Akali, used the prestige of the movement among the rural masses, and became the
political organ of Sikh communalism, mixing religion and politics and inculcating the
ideology of political separation from Hindus and Muslims.
Temple Entry:
1. Indian National Congress, in 1917, passed a resolution urging upon the people of
removing all disabilities imposed by custom upon the depressed classes.
2. Initially only Tilak and Gandhi gave top priority to the removal of Untouchability
3. It was not until 1923, that the Congress took any active steps towards the eradication of
untouchability- they adopted a basic strategy of educating and mobilizing opinion among
caste Hindus on the question.
In Kerala:
1. Satyagraha was used to fight the social disabilities prevalent. A beginning was made in
Vaikom
2. an intense campaign to arouse the conscience of savarnas (caste Hindus) and mobilize their
active support of many savarna organizations such as Kerala Hindu Sabha.
3. Vaikom Satyagraha created enthusiasm all over the country and volunteers began to arrive
from different parts of India.
4. After 1924, the struggle against untouchability and for the social and economic uplift of the
depressed classes continued all over India as a part of the Gandhian constructive programme.
5. In 1931 a temple entry Satyagraha at Guruvayur was organized by K Kelappa when the
CDM was suspended.
6. march was led by the poet Subramanian Tirumambu, who became famous as the ‘Singing
Sword of Kerala.’
7. Kelappan went on a fast unto death before the temple until it was opened to the depressed
classes
8. Caste Hindus from Kerala as well as rest of India made appeals to the Zamorin of Calicut,
custodian of the temple, to throw open the temples to all Hindus; but without any success.
9. movement had created an impetus for social change throughout the country. It led to a
transformation everywhere.
10. In November 1936, the Maharaja of Travancore issued a proclamation throwing open all
Government-controlled temples to all Hindus irrespective of caste. Madras followed suit in
1938
11. The main weakness of the temple entry movement and the Gandhian or nationalist approach
in fighting caste oppression was that even while arousing the people against untouchability
they lacked a strategy for ending the caste system itself
Gandhi’s Attitude:
1. initially opposed to the Swarajists proposal of council entry, but gradually moved towards a
reconciliation with Swarajists because Gandhiji felt that council entry had already occurred
and now to withdraw would be ‘disastrous’ and would be ‘misunderstood’ by the
Government and the people ‘as a rout and weakness.’
2. The courageous and uncompromising manner in which the Swarajists had functioned in the
councils convinced Gandhiji that, however politically wrong, they would certainly not
become just another limb of Colonial administration.
3. There was a Government crackdown on revolutionary terrorists and the Swarajists towards
the end of 1924; this angered Gandhi and he expressed his solidarity with the Swarajists
4. swarajists won forty-two out of 101 elected seats in the Central Legislative Assembly
5. clear majority in the Central Provinces; they were the largest party in Bengal; and they fared
quite well in Bombay and U.P., They did not fare well in Madras and Punjab because of
strong casteist and communal currents.
Their Drawbacks:
1. The Swarajists lacked a policy to coordinate their militancy inside legislatures with the mass
struggle outside.
2. They relied totally on newspaper reporting to communicate with the public.
3. An obstructionist strategy had its limitations.
4. They could not carry on with their coalition partners very far because of conflicting ideas
5. They failed to resist the perks and privileges of power and office.
6. They failed to support the peasants’ cause in Bengal and lost support among Muslim
members who were pro- peasant
Influences:
1. Upsurge of working class trade unionism after the War
2. Russian Revolution (1917) and the success of the young Soviet state in consolidating itself.
3. Newly sprouting communist groups with their emphasis on Marxism, socialism and the
proletariat.
4. Journals publishing memoirs and articles extolling the self- sacrifice of revolutionaries
5. The revolutionaries in northern India were the first to emerge out of the mood of frustration
and reorganize under the leadership of the old veterans, Ramprasad Bismil, Jogesh Chatterjea
and Sachindranath Sanyal whose Bandi Jiwan served as a textbook to the revolutionary
movement.
6. founded the Hindustan Republican Association (or Army) – (later renamed Hindustan
Socialist Republic Association to organize armed revolution to overthrow colonial rule and
establish Federal Republic of the United States of India
7. The most important ‘action’ of the HRA was the Kakori Robbery.
In Bengal:
1. After Das’s death (1925), the Bengal Congress broke up into two factions- one led by J.M.
Sengupta (Anushilan group joined forces with him) and the other led by Subhash Bose
(Yugantar group backed him).
2. assassination attempt on the notorious Calcutta Police Commissioner, Charles Tegart by
Gopinath Saha in 1924.
3. The Government came down heavily on revolutionaries. Many including Subhash Bose were
arrested. Gopinath Saha was hanged. The revolutionary activity suffered a severe setback
4. factionalism among the revolutionaries especially the Yugantar and Anushilan rivalry
5. but soon many of them started regrouping- Among the new “Revolt Groups”, the most active
and famous was the Chittagong group under Surya Sen. Surya Sen had actively
participated in the NCM
6. Surya Sen decided to organize an armed rebellion along with his associates- Anant Singh,
Ganesh Ghosh and Lokenath Baul- to show that it was possible to challenge the armed might
of the mighty Bitish Empire.
7. They had planned to occupy two main armounes in Chittagong to seize and supply arms to
the revolutionaries to destroy telephone and telegraph lines and to dislocate the railway link
of Chittagong with the rest of Bengal.
8. The raid was conducted under the banner of Indian Republican Army- Chittagong Branch.
9. The raid was quite successful; Sen hoisted the national flag, took salute and proclaimed a
provisional government.
10. Surya Sen was arrested in February 1933 and hanged in January 1934
11. Chittagong raid fired the imagination of the revolutionary-minded youth
12. Official Reaction to Chittagong raid: There was panic at first and then severe government
repression. Armed with 20 repressive Acts, the Government let loose the police on the
revolutionaries. Jawaharlal Nehru was arrested for sedition and given two years’ sentence
because he had condemned imperialism and praised the heroism of the revolutionaries.
Ideological Rethinking:
1. A real breakthrough was made by Bhagat Singh and his comrades in terms of revolutionary
ideology, forms of revolutionary struggle and the goals of revolution.
2. HRA stood for abolition of all systems which made exploitation of man by man possible”.
3. HRA’s main organ, The Revolutionary, had proposed nationalization of railways and other
means of transport and of heavy industries such as ship building and steel.
4. HRA had also decided to start labour and peasant organisations
5. During their last days (late 1920s), these revolutionaries had started moving away from
individual heroic action and terrorism towards mass politics
6. Bismil appealed to the youth to give up pistols and revolvers, not to work in revolutionary
conspiracies and instead work in an open movement. He urged the youth to strengthen
Hindu-Muslim unity
7. revolutionary position is contained in the book The Philosophy of the Bomb written by
Bhagwati charan Vohra
8. Bhagat Singh had moved away from belief in terrorism and individual heroic action to
Marxism and the belief that a popular broad-based movement alone could lead to a
successful revolution.
9. That is why Bhagat Singh helped establish the Punjab Naujawan Bharat Sabha (1926) as an
open wing of revolutionaries to carry out political work among the youth, peasants and
workers
10. Then why did Bhagat Singh and his comrades still take recourse to individual heroic
action: effective acquisition of new ideology is a prolonged and historical process. young
intellectuals faced the classic dilemma of how to mobilize people and recruit them. Here,
they decided to opt for ‘propaganda by deed,’
11. He also said, “The struggle in India will continue, so long as a handful of exploiters continue
to exploit labour of common people to further their own interests. It matters little whether
these exploiters are British capitalists, British and Indian capitalists in alliance, or even
purely Indians.”
12. He defined socialism scientifically as abolition of capitalism and class domination.
Main Recommendations:
1. confined itself to British India, as it envisaged future link-up of British India with the
princely states on a federal basis.
2. Dominion status on lines of self-governing dominions as the form of government desired by
Indians
3. Rejection of separate electorates which had been the basis of constitutional reforms so far;
instead, a demand for joint electorates with reservation of seats for Muslims at the centre and
in provinces where they were in minority in proportion to the Muslim population there with
right to contest additional seats.
4. Linguistic provinces.
5. Nineteen fundamental rights including equal rights for women, right to form unions, and
universal adult suffrage.
6. Responsible government at the centre and in provinces
7. Central Government to be headed by a Governor- General, appointed by the British
Government but paid out of Indian revenues, who would act on the advice of the central
executive council responsible to the Parliament.
8. Full protection to cultural and religious interests of Muslims.
9. Complete dissociation of state from religion.
Not only were the Muslim League, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Sikh communalists unhappy
about the Nehru Report, but the younger section of the Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru and
Subhash Bose were also angered.
Nehru, Bose and Satyamurthi, backed by a large number of delegates, pressed for the acceptance
of ‘Purna Swaraj’ or Complete Independence as the goal of the Congress
Gandhi, Motilal Nehru and many other older leaders felt that the national consensus achieved
with such great difficulty on Dominion Status should not be abandoned in such haste
Congress’ modified goal that if the Government did not accept a constitution based on Dominion
States by the end of the year, the Congress would not only adopt Complete Independence as its
goal, but it would also launch a CDM to attain that goal.
Nehru and Bose jointly set up the Independence for India League.
With no positive response forthcoming from the Government on these demands, the
Congress Working Committee invested Gandhi with full powers to launch the (CDM) at a
time and place of his choice.
By February-end, Gandhi had decided to make salt the central formula for the CDM. Why
Salt? As Gandhi said, “There is no other article like salt, outside water, by taxing which the
Government can reach the starving millions, the sick.
Like khadi, again, it offered to the urban adherents the opportunity of a symbolic
identification with mass suffering.
Impact of Agitation:
1. Imports of foreign cloth and other items fell.
2. Government income from liquor, excise and land revenue fell.
3. Elections to Legislative Assembly were largely boycotted.
4. The Government’s attitude throughout 1930 was marked by ambivalence- it was puzzled and
perplexed. It was faced with the classic dilemma of ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t
5. But once the repression began, the ordinances banning civil liberties were freely used,
including gagging of the press
6. several killed and wounded, while 90,000 satyagrahis including Gandhi and other Congress
leaders were imprisoned.
7. The government repression and publication of the Simon Commission Report, which
contained no mention of dominion status further upset even moderate political opinion.
8. In July 1930 the viceroy, as a conciliatory gesture, suggested a Round Table conference
(RTC) and reiterated the goal of dominion status. He also accepted the suggestion that Tej
Bahadur Sapru and M.R. Jayakar be allowed to explore the possibility of peace between the
Congress and the Government.
Decline of the Communist and WPP: virtually wiped out during 1929 by two developments
Repression by the British
1. In 1922-24 itself Communists trying to enter India from the Soviet Union were tried
2. Government did the same when it tried SA Dange, Muzaffar Ahmed, Nalini Gupta and
Shaukat Usmani in the Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case- in an effort to cripple the nascent
movement
3. it arrested thirty-two radical political and trade union activists, including three British
Communists Philip Spratt, Ben Bradley and Lester Hutchinson- who had come to India to
help organize trade union movement- Meerut Conspiracy Case.
4. The Government design to isolate the Communists from the mainstream of the national
movement not only miscarried but had the very opposite consequence.
5. It did, however, succeed in one respect. The growing working class movement was deprived
of its leadership
Leftist Deviation
1. Communists inflicted a more deadly blow on themselves by taking a sudden lurch towards
what is described in leftist terminology as sectarian politics or ‘leftist deviation’
2. Communists broke their connection with the National Congress
3. Nehru and Bose were described as ‘agents of the bourgeoisie within the national movement’
4. Gandhi-Irwin Pact was described as a proof of the Congress betrayal of nationalism
5. Finally, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party was also dissolved on the ground that it was
unadvisable to form a two-class (workers’ and peasants’) party for it was likely to fall prey to
petty bourgeois influences.
6. The result was their isolation from the national movement
7. Further, when the Communists split into several splinter groups, the Government took further
advantage of this situation and, in 1934, declared the CPI illegal.
Subhas Bose and his left-wing followers founded the Forward Bloc in 1939 after Bose was
compelled to resign from the Presidentship of the Congress. The Hindustan Socialist Republican
Association, the Revolutionary Socialist Party, and various Trotskyist groups also functioned
during the 1930s.
‘Struggle-Truce-Struggle’ Strategy:
1. A large number of Congressmen led by Gandhi believed that a mass phase of movement
(struggle phase) had to be followed by a phase of reprieve (truce phase) before the next stage
of mass struggle could be taken up.
2. would enable the masses to recoup their strength to fight and also give the Government a
chance to respond to the demands
3. If the Government did not respond positively, the movement could be resumed again
4. Criticizing the S-T-S strategy, Nehru argued that the Indian national movement had reached a
stage, after the Lahore Congress call for Purna Swaraj programme, in which there should be
a continuous confrontation and conflict with imperialism till it was overthrown.
5. He accepted that the struggle had to go through setbacks and phases of upswing and
downswing; but these should not lead to a passive phase or a stage of compromise or
cooperation with the colonial framework
6. suggested a Struggle-Victory (S-V) strategy or a permanent waging of mass struggle till
victory was won.
Agrarian Reforms
1. Under the constitutional structure of the 1935 Act, the ministries did not have adequate
powers.
2. There were inadequate financial resources as a lion’s share was appropriated by the
Government of India.
3. They could also not touch the existing administrative structure, as it was guarded by the
Viceroy and Governor
4. Strategy of class adjustments was another hurdle since zamindars, etc. had to be conciliated
and neutralized
5. There was constraint of time since the logic of Congress politics was confrontation and not
cooperation with colonialism.
6. reactionary second chamber (Legislative Council) dominated by landlords, moneylenders and
capitalists in United Provinces, Bihar, Bombay, Madras and Assam had to be conciliated
7. Agrarian legislation by the Ministries differed from province to province
8. The landlord’s power to realize rent was greatly reduced- Landlords were forbidden from
charging illegal dues
9. Occupancy tenants could no longer be ejected from their holdings for nonpayment of rent.
10. illegal exactions such as nazrana (forced gifts) and begar (forced unpaid labour) were
abolished.
11. basic system of landlordism was, of course, not affected. Furthermore, most of these benefits
went to statutory and occupancy tenants while subtenants did not gain much
Evaluation
1. by 1939 internal strife’s, opportunism and hunger for power had started surfacing among
Congressmen
2. practice of bogus membership made its appearance and began to grow
3. There was a scramble for jobs and positions of personal advantage
4. Many Congressmen began to give way to casteism in their search for power
5. Gandhi’s reaction: Gandhi warned the Congressmen that if the Congress isn’t purged of
illegalities and irregularities, it will cease to be the power it is. However, Gandhiji saw that
this slackening of the movement and weakening of the moral fibre was in part inevitable in a
phase of non- mass struggle.
6. He therefore, advised giving up of offices and starting preparation for another phase of
Satyagraha
7. Congress ministries resigned in October 1939 after the outbreak of the Second World War.
8. it brought Left and Right in the Congress closer because of the common policy on the
question of participation in the war
The 28-month Congress rule was also significant for the following reasons.
1. The contention that Indian self-government was necessary for radical social transformation
got confirmed.
2. Congressmen demonstrated that a movement could use state power to further its ends without
being co-opted.
3. The ministries were able to control communal riots.
4. The morale of the bureaucracy came down.
5. Council work helped neutralise many erstwhile hostile elements (landlords, etc
6. Administrative work by Indians further weakened the myth that Indians were not fit to rule.
7. When an all-India political crisis occurred and the central Congress leadership wanted it, the
Ministers promptly resigned.
8. Finally: Above all, the Congress gained by influencing all sections of the people.
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