Nationalism in India — Notes

In India, nationalism grew together with the anti-colonial movement: people of different classes discovered a common opponent in colonial rule, but each group felt that rule differently.

The First World War (1914–18) left India poorer and angrier:

• defence spending was met with war loans, higher customs duties and a new income tax;
• prices roughly doubled between 1913 and 1918;
• villages were pressed into supplying soldiers through forced recruitment;
• crops failed in 1918–19 and 1920–21, and an influenza epidemic followed; millions died of famine and disease.

Satyagraha. Gandhiji returned from South Africa in January 1915. His method insisted on truth and non-violence: a person with a just cause need not use force, and could win by appealing to the conscience of the oppressor. He tried it out in three local struggles:

• Champaran, Bihar (1917) — peasants against the oppressive indigo plantation system;
• Kheda, Gujarat (1917–18) — peasants hit by crop failure and plague asked for relief from revenue collection;
• Ahmedabad (1918) — a satyagraha of cotton mill workers.

Rowlatt Act (1919). Passed in spite of the united opposition of the Indian members of the Imperial Legislative Council, it gave the government sweeping powers to repress political activity and allowed detention without trial for two years. Gandhiji called a nationwide satyagraha beginning with a hartal on 6 April 1919.

In Amritsar, local leaders were arrested and police fired on a procession on 10 April; martial law followed under General Dyer. On 13 April 1919 (Baisakhi) Dyer blocked the exits of Jallianwala Bagh and fired on a crowd, many of them villagers at the fair who did not know of martial law. Hundreds died. Protests, strikes and clashes spread in north India; as violence grew, Gandhiji called off the Rowlatt satyagraha.

Khilafat. After the Ottoman defeat there were rumours of a harsh treaty for the Sultan, the Khalifa. A Khilafat Committee was formed in Bombay in March 1919 under Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali. Gandhiji saw a chance for Hindu–Muslim unity.

The plan. In Hind Swaraj (1909) Gandhiji argued that the British could rule India only as long as Indians worked with them. At the Calcutta session (September 1920) he persuaded other leaders to start non-cooperation for Khilafat and swaraj; at Nagpur (December 1920) a compromise was reached and the programme adopted. The stages: give up titles → boycott civil services, army, police, courts, councils, schools and foreign goods → full civil disobedience if the government turned to repression. The movement began in January 1921.

Towns. Students quit government schools and colleges, teachers and headmasters resigned, and lawyers stopped appearing in court. Council elections were boycotted in most provinces except Madras, where the Justice Party of non-Brahmans contested them as a route to power. Foreign cloth was burnt, liquor shops picketed, cloth imports fell sharply and Indian mills and handlooms gained. The movement slowed because khadi was costlier than mill cloth and Indian institutions came up slowly.

Awadh. Baba Ramchandra, a sanyasi who had been an indentured labourer in Fiji, led peasants against talukdars and landlords who demanded very high rents, cesses and begar. Demands: lower rent, end of begar, social boycott of oppressive landlords through nai-dhobi bandhs. Jawaharlal Nehru toured Awadh villages in June 1920; the Oudh Kisan Sabha was set up by October 1920 and had over 300 branches within a month. In 1921 some actions turned violent; local leaders falsely claimed Gandhiji had approved no-tax and land seizure.

Gudem Hills (Andhra Pradesh). Colonial forest closure denied people grazing, fuelwood and fruit, and they resented begar for roads. Alluri Sitarama Raju, inspired by non-cooperation but convinced that force was needed, led a guerrilla movement; his followers attacked police stations. He was captured and executed in 1924.

Assam plantations. The Inland Emigration Act of 1859 stopped workers from leaving without permission. In 1921 thousands walked out and set off for their villages; stranded by a railway and steamer strike, they were caught and beaten by police.

Withdrawal. After a violent clash at Chauri Chaura (Gorakhpur) in February 1922, Gandhiji called off the movement. C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru formed the Swaraj Party to contest council elections; Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose wanted more radical action and full independence.

Background. Agricultural prices began to fall from 1926 and collapsed after 1930 in the world depression. The Simon Commission, set up by the Tory government, arrived in 1928 to review India's constitution; it had no Indian member and was met with "Go back Simon" protests by the Congress and the Muslim League. In October 1929 Lord Irwin offered dominion status in an unspecified future and a Round Table Conference.

Lahore, December 1929. Under Jawaharlal Nehru the Congress formalised the demand for Purna Swaraj; 26 January 1930 was observed as Independence Day.

The Salt March. On 31 January 1930 Gandhiji sent Irwin eleven demands, the most important being the abolition of the salt tax, with a deadline of 11 March. On 12 March he set out from Sabarmati with 78 volunteers, walking about 240 miles in 24 days. On 6 April at Dandi he made salt by boiling sea water. Salt worked as a symbol because it was used by rich and poor alike and its manufacture was a government monopoly.

Civil disobedience asked people to break colonial laws, not only to refuse cooperation: salt was made, foreign cloth boycotted, liquor shops picketed, revenue and chaukidari taxes refused, village officials resigned and forest laws broken.

Repression and truce. Abdul Ghaffar Khan was arrested in April 1930 and troops fired on crowds in Peshawar; Gandhiji was arrested a month later, and workers in Sholapur attacked government buildings. The Gandhi–Irwin Pact (5 March 1931): Gandhiji agreed to attend the Round Table Conference (the Congress had boycotted the first) and the government agreed to release political prisoners. The Second Round Table Conference in London (December 1931) failed. The movement was relaunched in 1932 and had lost momentum by 1934.

• Rich peasants (Patidars of Gujarat, Jats of UP): hit by falling prices of commercial crops, they refused revenue and wanted it reduced; disappointed when the movement ended in 1931 without a revenue cut, many stayed away in 1932.
• Poor peasants: wanted unpaid rent remitted; many joined radical movements led by Socialists and Communists, since the Congress was unwilling to back no-rent campaigns that would upset rich peasants and landlords.
• Business classes: had prospered during the war; formed the Indian Industrial and Commercial Congress (1920) and FICCI (1927), with leaders such as Purshottamdas Thakurdas and G.D. Birla. They wanted protection against foreign goods and gave funds and refused imports. After the Round Table Conference failed they feared militant activity, prolonged disruption and socialism among young Congress members.
• Industrial workers: joined in large numbers only in the Nagpur region; railway (1930) and dock (1932) strikes; the Congress kept workers' demands out to avoid alienating industrialists.
• Women: took part on a large scale, mostly from high-caste urban and rich peasant families; the Congress was reluctant to give them positions of authority.

Limits. Dalits: Gandhiji called them harijans and campaigned against untouchability; Dr B.R. Ambedkar formed the Depressed Classes Association (1930) and demanded separate electorates at the Second Round Table Conference. When the British accepted, Gandhiji fasted unto death; the Poona Pact (September 1932) gave the Depressed Classes reserved seats in provincial and central councils, elected by the general electorate. Muslims: after non-cooperation many felt distant from a Congress seen as close to Hindu religious groups such as the Hindu Mahasabha; communal clashes followed. Jinnah offered to drop separate electorates for reserved seats in the Central Assembly and proportional representation in Bengal and Punjab, but at the All Parties Conference (1928) M.R. Jayakar of the Hindu Mahasabha opposed compromise.

• Bharat Mata. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote "Vande Mataram" in the 1870s as a hymn to the motherland; it later appeared in his novel Anandamath and was widely sung in the Swadeshi movement in Bengal. Abanindranath Tagore painted Bharat Mata as a calm, ascetic, spiritual figure; later images took many forms, and devotion to the mother figure came to be seen as proof of nationalism.
• Folklore. Nationalists believed folk tales, songs and legends held the true culture of the people. Rabindranath Tagore collected ballads, nursery rhymes and myths; Natesa Sastri published the four-volume The Folklore of Southern India.
• Flags and symbols. The Swadeshi flag of Bengal: red, green and yellow, with eight lotuses for the provinces of British India and a crescent moon for Hindus and Muslims. By 1921 Gandhiji had designed the Swaraj flag: red, green and white with a spinning wheel in the centre. Carrying the flag in processions became an act of defiance.
• History. Nationalist writers retold India's achievements in art, architecture, science, mathematics, religion, law and philosophy, answering British claims that Indians were backward and urging pride.
• Limits. Images and histories drawn mainly from a Hindu past could make people of other communities feel left out.

The board map list for this chapter asks you to locate and label these places on an outline political map of India. Learn each as a clue–place pair.

• Congress sessions: Calcutta (September 1920), Nagpur (December 1920), Madras (1927).
• Satyagrahas: Champaran (1917, indigo), Kheda (1917–18, revenue relief), Ahmedabad (1918, mill workers).
• Jallianwala Bagh (Amritsar, 13 April 1919).
• Dandi (salt law broken, 6 April 1930).

Use landmarks: Champaran touches Nepal in north-west Bihar; Kheda lies just south of Ahmedabad on the way to Vadodara; Amritsar is near the Pakistan border in Punjab; Dandi is on the south Gujarat coast, south of Surat; Nagpur is near the centre of India; Madras is on the Coromandel coast; Calcutta is on the Hugli near the head of the Bay of Bengal.