NATIONALISM IN INDIA

- Anjali Behera
Class : 10
Roll No. 4
School : K V Bhandup Shift 2
 THE FIRST WORLD WAR, KHILAFAT AND
NON-COOPERATION
• The first World War (1914-1918) created a new political and economic situation.
• India faced various problems during war period:
- Increase in defence expenditure.
- Prices increased through the war years.
- Forced recruitment in rural areas.
• During 1918-19 and 1920-21, crops failure in many parts of India, resulting in acute
shortages of food.
• Hardships did not end after the war was over.
 THE IDEA OF SATYAGRAHA
• Satyagraha is a novel way of fighting the colonial rule in India.
• It is a non-aggressive, peaceful mass agitation against oppression and injustice.
• Satyagraha means insistence on truth.
• It is a moral force, not passive resistance.
• In January 1915 Mahatma Gandhi returned to India.
 THE ROWLATT ACT (1919)

• In 1919, Mahatma Gandhi launched a nationwide satyagraha against the proposed

Rowlatt Act.
• This act gave the government enormous powers to repress political prisoners
without trail for two years.
• The British government decided to clamp down on nationalists by witnessing the
outrage of the people.
• On April 10, police in Amritsar fired on a peaceful procession, which provoked
widespread attacks on banks, post offices and railway stations.
• Martial law was imposed and General Dyer took command.
 JALLIANWALA BAGH MASSACRE

• On 13 th April, the Jallianwala Bagh incident took place.

• A huge crowd gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh where a few people came to protest
against the government’s new repressive measures, while some came to attend the
annual Baisakhi fair.
• Dyer entered the area, blocked the exit points, and opened fire on the crowed,
killing hundreds.
• After the Jallianwala Bagh massacre news spread, strikes, clashes, with the police
and attacks on government buildings started.
• The government responded with brutal repression.
• Mahatma Gandhi called off the satyagraha movement as the violence spread.
 KHILAFAT MOVEMENT

• Mahatma Gandhi then took up the Khilafat issue by bringing Hindus and Muslims
together.
• Khilafat Movement was led by two brothers Shaukat Ali and Muhammad Ali.
• The First World War ended with the defeat of Ottoman Turkey.
• Khilafat Committee was formed in Bombay in March 1919 to defeat the Khilafa’s
temporal powers.
• Mahatma Gandhiji convinced the Congress leaders to support the Khilafat
Movement and start a Non-Cooperation Campaign for Swaraj.
 WHY NON-COOPERATION ?

• According to Mahatma Gandhi, British rule was established in India with the
cooperation of Indians.
• If India refused to cooperate, British rule in India would collapse within a year, and
swaraj would come.
• Non-cooperation movement is proposed in stages.
• It should begin with the surrender of titles that the government awarded and a
boycott of civil services, army, police, courts and legislative councils, schools and
foreign goods.
• After many hurdles and campaigning between the supporters and opponents of the
movement. finally, At the Congress session at Nagpur in December 1920, the Non-
Cooperation programme was adopted.
 DIFFERING STRANDS WITHIN THE
MOVEMENT
• Differing strands within the movement
• The Non-Cooperation-Khilafat Movement began in January 1921.
• In this movement, various social groups participated, but the term meant different things to
different people.
• The Movement in the Towns
• It started with middle class participation in cities.
• Thousands of Students, teachers, headmasters left government-controlled schools and
colleges, lawyers gave up studies, jobs, legal practices and joined movements.
• council elections were boycotted.
• In the economic front, the effects of non-cooperation were more dramatic
• The production of Indian textile mills and handlooms went up
• people started boycotting Foreign.
• Liquor shops were picketed.
 REASONS FOR SLOWDOWN OF MOVEMENT
• This movement slowed down due to a variety of reasons such as Khadi clothes are
expensive.
• Less Indian institutions for students and teachers to choose from, so they went back
to government schools and lawyers joined back government courts.

MOVEMENT IN THE COUNTRYSIDE

• The Non-Cooperation Movement spread to the countryside where peasants and tribals were
developing in different parts of India.

• Peasants and tribals took over the struggle which turned violent gradually.
 PEASANT MOVEMENT IN AWADH
• The peasants were led by Baba Ramchandra in Awadh against landlords and talukdars.
• The peasant movement started against talukdars and landlords who demanded high rents
and a variety of other cases.
• It demanded reduction of revenue, abolition of begar and social boycott of oppressive
landlords.
• Jawaharlal Nehru in June 1920, started going around the villages in Awadh to understand
their grievances.
• In October, he along with few others set up the Oudh Kisan Sabha and within a month 300
branches had been set up.
• In 1921, the peasant movement spread and the houses of talukdars and merchants were
attacked, bazaars were looted and grain boards were taken over.
 MOVEMENT OF TRIBALS IN ANDHRA
PRADESH

• In the early 1920s, Alluri Sitaram Raju led the guerrilla warfare in the Gudem Hills of
Andhra Pradesh.
• The government started closing down forest areas due to which their livelihood was
affected.
• Finally, the hill people revolted, which was led by Alluri Sitaram Raju who claimed
that he had a variety of special powers.
• The rebels attacked police stations.
• Raju was captured and executed in 1924.ra Pradesh.
 SWARAJ IN THE PLANTATIONS
• Swaraj in the Plantations
• For the plantation workers in Assam, freedom means moving freely in and out and
retaining a link with the village from which they had come
• They protested against the Inland Emigration Act (1859):
• Under the Inland Emigration Act plantation workers were not permitted to leave the
tea gardens without permission.
• After they heard of the Non-Cooperation Movement, thousands of workers left the
plantations and headed home.
• But, unfortunately, they never reached their destination and were caught by the
police and brutally beaten up.
• Each group interpreted the term swaraj in their own ways.
 TOWARDS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

• • In February 1922, Mahatma Gandhi decided to withdraw the Non-Cooperation

Movement, because Mahatma Gandhi felt that it was turning violent.

• • Many leaders such as C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru formed the Swaraj Party within
the Congress to argue for a return to council politics.

• • Younger leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose pressed for more
radical mass agitation and for full independence.
 FACTORS THAT SHAPED INDIAN POLITICS
TOWARDS THE LATE 1920S
The Worldwide Economic
Depression Simon Commission

• The Worldwide Economic Depression • The Statutory Commission was set up by the Tory
government of Britain to look into the demands of
the nationalists and suggest changes in the
• → Agricultural prices collapsed after 1930 as the constitutional structure of India.
demand for agricultural goods fell and exports
• The Commission arrived in India in 1928.
declined.
• The Congress protested against this commission,
and it was greeted by the slogan ‘Go back Simon’.
• → Peasants found it difficult to sell their harvests
• In December, 1929, under the presidency of
and pay their revenue.
Jawaharlal Nehru, the Lahore session of Congress
formalized the demand of “Purna Swaraj”or full
independence for India.
• It was declared that 26 January 1930 would be
celebrated as Independence Day.
 THE SALT MARCH AND THE CIVIL
DISOBEDIENCE MOVEMENT

• Mahatma Gandhiji chose salt as the powerful symbol or medium that could unite the
nation as it is consumed by all the sections of the society.
• On 31 January 1930, Mahatma Gandhi sent a letter to Viceroy Irwin stating eleven
demands.
• Among the demands, the most stirring of all was the demand to abolish the salt tax
which is consumed by the rich and the poor.
• The demands needed to be fulfilled by 11 March or else Congress would start a civil
disobedience campaign.
 SALT MARCH

• The famous Salt or Dandi March began by Mahatma Gandhi accompanied by 78 of

his trusted volunteers on March 12, 1930.
• The march was over 240 miles, from Gandhiji’s ashram in Sabarmati to the Gujarati
coastal town of Dandi.
• The volunteers walked for 24 days, about 10 miles a day.
• On 6th April 1930, Gandhiji reached Dandi, a village in Gujarat and broke the Salt
Law by boiling water and manufacturing salt.
• Thus, it began the Civil Disobedience Movement.
 CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MOVEMENT

• It was different from Non-Cooperation Movement as people were now asked not only to refuse
cooperation with the British as they had done in 1921-22, but also to break colonial laws.

• Boycott of foreign goods, non-payment of taxes, breaking forest laws were its main features.
• The movement spread across the world and salt law was broken in different parts of the country
• As the movement spread Foreign cloth was boycotted, peasants refused to pay revenue and in
many places, forest law was violated.
• In April 1930, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a devout disciple of Mahatma Gandhi was arrested.
• Mahatma Gandhi was arrested a month later which led to attacks to all structures that symbolised
British rule.
• The British Government followed a policy of brutal repression.
• By witnessing the horrific situation, Mahatma Gandhi decided to call off the movement.
 GANDHI-IRWIN PACT

• On 5 March, 1931, Lord Irwin, the Viceroy, signed a pact with Gandhi.
• Gandhi-Irwin Pact, Gandhiji consented to participate in a Round Table Conference
in London.
• In December, 1931, Gandhiji went to London for the Second Round Table
Conference but returned disappointed.
• Gandhi relaunched the Civil Disobedience Movement but by 1934 it lost its
momentum.
 HOW PARTICIPANTS SAW THE MOVEMENT
Rich peasants Poor Peasants Business Classes
The Patidars of Reve Gujarat and the Jats of The poorer peasantry were not just After the war, their huge profits were
Uttar Pradesh – were active in the interested in the lowering of the reduced, wanted protection against
movement. revenue demand. import of foreign goods.
The producers of commercial crops, they Many of them were small tenants To organise business interests, the
were very hard hit by to the trade cultivating land they had rented from Indian Industrial and Commercial
depression and falling prices. landlords. Congress in 1920 and the Federation of
the Indian Chamber of Commerce and
Cash income disappeared, they found it As the Depression continued and cash Industries (FICCI) in 1927 was formed.
impossible to pay the government’s incomes dwindled, the small tenants
revenue demand. found it difficult to pay their rent. The industrialists attacked colonial
control over the Indian economy and
The refusal of the government to reduce the They wanted the unpaid rent to the supported the Civil Disobedience
revenue demand led to widespread landlord to be remitted, they joined a Movement when it was first launched.
resentment. variety of radical movements, often led
by Socialists and Communists. Some of the industrial workers did
These rich peasants became enthusiastic
participate in the Civil Disobedience
supporters of the Civil Disobedience Apprehensive of raising issues that Movement. In 1930 and 1932 railway
Movement, organizing their communities, might upset the rich peasants and workers and dock workers were on
and at times forcing reluctant members, to landlords, the Congress was unwilling strike.
participate in the boycott programs. to support ‘ no rent ‘ campaigns in most
places. The spread of militant activities, worries
For them the fight for swaraj was a struggle
of prolonged business disruptions,
against high revenues. The relationship between the poor growing influences of socialism
peasant and the Congress remained amongst the young Congress forced
But they were deeply disappointed when
uncertain. them not to join the movement.
the movement was called off in 1931 without
the revenue rates being revised.
 LIMITS OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
• One such group was the nation’s ‘ untouchables ‘, who from around the 1930s had begun to call themselves dalit or
oppressed.
• For long the Congress had ignored the dalits, for fear of offending the sanatanis, the conservative high caste
Hindus.
• Mahatma Gandhi declared that swaraj would not come for a hundred years if untouchability was not eliminated.
• He called the untouchables’ harijan or the children of God.
• He organised satyagraha for the untouchables but they were keen on a different political solution to the problems
of the community. They demanded reserved seats in educational institutions and a separate electorate
• Dr B.R. Ambedkar, the leader of the Dalits, formed an association in 1930, called the Depressed Classes
Association.
• He clashed with Gandhiji at the second Round Table Conference by demanding separate electorates for Dalits.
• Poona Pact of September 1932, between the Gandhiji and B.R. Ambedkar (1932) gave the Depressed Classes
(later to be known as the Scheduled Castes) reserved seats in Provincial and Central Councils but were voted by
general electorate.
• After the decline of the Non-Cooperation-Khilafat movement, Muslims felt alienated from the Congress due to
which the relations between Hindus and Muslims worsened.
• The leader of the Muslim League M.A. Jinnah wanted reserved seats for Muslims in Central Assembly and
representation in proportion to population in the Muslim-dominated provinces.
 THE SENSE OF COLLECTIVE BELONGING
• The sense of collective belonging came partly through the experience of united struggles.
• History and fiction, folklore and songs, popular prints and symbols, all played a part in the making
of nationalism.
• In the twentieth century, the identity of India came to be visually associated with the image of
Bharat Mata.
• Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay created the image and in the 1870s he wrote ‘Vande Mataram’ as a
hymn to the motherland.
• Abanindranath Tagore painted his famous image of Bharat Mata portrayed as an ascetic figure; she
is calm, composed, divine and spiritual.
• In late-nineteenth-century India, nationalists began recording folk tales sung by bards and they
toured villages to gather folk songs and legends.
• During the Swadeshi movement in Bengal, a tricolour flag (red, green and yellow) was designed
which had eight lotuses representing eight provinces of British India, and a crescent moon,
representing Hindus and Muslims.
• By 1921, Gandhiji had designed the Swaraj flag. It was again a tricolour (red, green and white) and
had a spinning wheel in the centre.
 CONCLUSION

• In the first half of the twentieth century, various groups and classes of Indians came
together for the struggle of independence.
• The Congress under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi attempted to resolve
differences and ensure that the demands of one group did not alienate another.
• In other words, what was emerging was a nation with many voices wanting freedom
from colonial rule.
 BIBILIOGRAPHY

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org
• https://ncert.nic.in
• https://toppr.in
• https://tutormate.in
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