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Home , Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Bardoli Satyagraha, Chauri Chaura incident, Chittagong armoury raid, Nathuram Godse, Nationalism

Leaders and Followers: and the Making of Indian

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

Lesson: Leaders and Followers: Gandhi and the Making of Lesson Developer : Prof. Sumit Sarkar College/Department : Professor (retired), Department of History, University of

1 Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi Leaders and Followers: Gandhi and the Making of Indian Nationalism

Table of contents

Chapter 9: Gandhian nationalism after 1919: ideas and movements • 9.2: Leaders and followers: Gandhi and the making of Indian nationalism • Summary • Exercises • Glossary • Further readings

2 Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi Leaders and Followers: Gandhi and the Making of Indian Nationalism

9.2: Leaders and followers: Gandhi and the making of Indian nationalism

Shifting approaches

Historiographical approaches to Indian nationalism in the Gandhian era have inevitably varied and shifted across time. Initially, there were contrasting pro-colonial and Indian nationalist readings of colonial and Gandhian nationalist : the first trying to justify what was sometimes declared to be ‘’s work in ’, the second tending to glorify anti-colonial nationalism, and particularly Gandhi. This earlier work took the form of general surveys based on published material: biographies, autobiographies, collections of letters.

A major historiographical breakthrough came about from the 1960s with the opening up of unpublished official reports and correspondence (archival material) and letters and diaries of Indian activists as well as of British official and non official persons (private papers). Such research was pioneered in Cambridge (hence known as the CambridgeSchool of history) by scholars like Anil Seal and C. A. Bayly. They tended to highlight internal factional disputes among nationalists and, so presented a less starry- eyed view of nationalists as well as of British officials. Historians with nationalist leanings often criticized such work for its neglect or down-playing of patriotic aspirations as well as of moments of mass agitations.

In the 1970s- 80s there occurred a second major transformation, with the emergence of what came to be called the ‘Subaltern ’, pioneered by Ranajit Guha and his colleagues. This school emphasized the importance of ‘ from below’: struggles of ordinary peasants and tribal people, and not just the leading role of great nationalists. The Congress leadership was, in fact, criticized for trying to make popular movements very tame and moderate. These historians pointed out Gandhi’s ‘betrayals’ or sudden retreats from popular upsurges, as for instance, after an occasion of spectacular violence at Chauri-Chaura, during the Non-cooperation movement.

Subalternist historians introduced an interesting emphasis on popular constructions of images of Gandhi, through the spread of rumours. Such rumours tended to create autonomous images of leaders or politicians, making them out to be often more radical than they actually were. Peasants and tribals would imagine Gandhi in ways that were very different from what he actually was. They would then draw inspiration from this imagined Gandhi and his commands in to start struggles that were important to them but were not really a part of the Gandhian or Congress strategies. Such rumours sometimes declared that he would end landlord oppression and give lands to peasants. Or that he had asked Indians to prepare liquor at home, in order to avoid imported drinks.

More recently, the emphasis of some of these scholars has shifted from studies of popular initiatives to critiques of Western cultural domination and efforts to overcome it through indigenous cultural alternatives. Such scholars valorize Gandhi as a leader who broke free of all western influences and who lived and thought like an Indian peasant. The change, in other words, has been to some extent from political histories to cultural studies.

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Rowlatt , Khilafat, non-cooperation

In the 1920s and 30s, Indian political and social life was radically transformed by the Non-cooperation and movements, inspired and led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. After the bloody suppression of the military and popular of 1857, Indian political life had become confined to small groups of educated men petitioning and pleading for administrative and constitutional reforms. These ‘Moderate’ politicians had developed critiques of what they called drain of wealth, excessive revenue burdens, and decline of traditional handicrafts enforced by competition from cheap machine-made Lancashire goods. They pointed out that the British refused to give any protection to Indian commodities, and hindered efforts to develop indigenous industries. These criticisms remained standard throughout the nationalist era, but not much was done about their demands before the rise of mass nationalism.

What the Gandhian era achieved was a major breakthrough to other social groups beyond the educated middle classes, particularly peasants and business groups. Some methods that had been pioneered during the struggle against the partition of Bengal in 1903-1908 - boycott of foreign cloth, national education, and peaceful passive resistance, the success of which required active participation by vast numbers of people - now became effective for the first time in the Gandhian era. The breakthrough was related to the impact of the First World on India. Thousands of Indian soldiers were killed in a war in which they had no interest, and discontent was enhanced by the sharp rise in prices and wartime shortages. War and immediate post war years were marked by an accumulation of grievances, but also by moods of growing strength and confidence. Business groups had profited as Lancashire imports declined due to lack of shipping space. The working class grew in size. Hit by high prices and shortages, factory workers participated in a massive strike wave in the immediate post war years.

But what explains the sudden rise of Gandhi, a newcomer to Indian politics up until 1915, to a position of supreme leadership in the by 1919? Gandhi returned to India fresh from a partial victory in a struggle against white in . This had brought him into contact with settlers from many regions, and of India, giving him a potential reach much beyond that of other political leaders in India. Balgangadhar Tilak or had mainly provincial bases. ( in the case of Tilak, Bengal with regard to Pal). Unlike early Congress leaders, Gandhi had also worked with social groups not confined to the middle classes: coolies, traders, soldiers. He returned to India with a mastery over techniques of mass mobilization and political organization that had already been tried and tested in South Africa. These included careful training of disciplined volunteers, peaceful violation of specific , mass courting of arrest, occasional hartals and huge demonstrations. Gandhi’s insistence on peaceful methods and total non violence even when faced with repression sometimes led him to abruptly call off movements. Clearly, non violence was a profoundly important moral compulsion for Gandhi, far more meaningful than political success. Moreover, unrestrained mass movements would not have been in the interest of business groups and the propertied sections of the peasantry, as both were afraid that classes subordinate to them would become too confident and aggressive once they became a part of political struggles. Gandhi had to tread a delicate line between huge and intense mass movements, and the maintenance

4 Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi Leaders and Followers: Gandhi and the Making of Indian Nationalism of certain restraint. Non violence helped to combine popular upsurge with maintenance of controls.

During his stay in South Africa, Gandhi also developed a specific which was embodied in Hind (1909). Here he argued that the real evil was not British political rule but the domination of industrial civilization. He attacked railways which pumped out resources from the country through exports, lawyers whose fees burdened the poor, and even hospitals which were very costly and whose western medicines were often harmful. Much of this seems unrealistic and obscurantist. One has to realize, however, that the anti-modern message did have an appeal for many peasants, artisans and poor people in general who had not really benefited from the spread of colonial .

Value addition: from the sources

Gandhi on western modernity

“It would be folly to assume that an Indian Rockefeller would be better than the American Rockefeller…India’s consists in unlearning what she has learnt during the past 50 years or so. The railways, telegraphs, hospitals, lawyers, doctors, and all such like have to go, and the so called upper classes have to learn to live consciously and religiously and deliberately the simple life of the peasant.”

A very extreme statement, but an interesting and important one. We have to understand that such an apparently obscurantist statement did have an appeal to many peasants, artisans and lower middle classes who had benefited little from such manifestations of colonial modernity. The rejection of modernity has remained influential in some quarters, to a greater or lesser extent, both in India and else where.

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

The specific style of presentation in Hind Swaraj, the central text of Gandhian thinking needs to be kept in mind. It is written in the form of a dialogue between the ‘Editor’ (Gandhi himself) and the ‘Reader’ (Gandhi’s prospective audience). Such a form of presentation for a key political and philosophical text is unusual, but not unique. One may cite, as texts which must have been familiar to Gandhi, Plato’s or, to cite an Indian precedent, the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna in the Gita in Mahabharata. It still remains a very interesting format; particularly since Gandhi’s political thinking does have a dialogic character in general. This is a point that has been interestingly developed in David Hardiman’s recent work ‘Gandhi in His time and Ours’.

Other aspects of the Gandhian appeal included his cult of peasant simplicity- wearing the loin-cloth, traveling third class on trains, speaking simple Hindustani and not Sanskritized . Gandhi’s appeal was enhanced by his use of Hindu religious and imagery. However, there were evident problems with this kind of language so far as were concerned. At the same time, Hindu-Muslim was and remained a life-

5 Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi Leaders and Followers: Gandhi and the Making of Indian Nationalism long passionate and aspiration for Gandhi, a cause for which he eventually had to die.

Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915 having won a partial victory there. Smuts’ Indian Relief Act of June 1914 abolished the £ 3 tax and recognized Indian marriages, though discrimination certainly did not end and the broader question of white racist exploitation of Africans and Indian alike had hardly been touched upon as yet. After his return to India he travelled through large parts of the country by train. Between 1917 and early 1918 Gandhi acquired the reputation of a man who would take up specific local grievances and usually manage to redress them to some extent. Thus, he took up the grievances of oppressed Champaran indigo cultivators in Bihar, Kheda peasants in burdened by excessive revenue demands, and textile workers who were facing a wage-cut. His excellent relations with fellow-Gujarati mill owners helped him to settle this last dispute. Though these were only specific local matters, rumours had already started spreading about Gandhi which made him into a much more radical and transformative figure. He would end zamindari oppression, it came to be believed by the poor, give peasants and landless labourers land: a hope which made many grossly exploited tea-garden labourers in Assam start flocking back to their homes in Bihar and other parts of Northern and Central India during Non-cooperation. Gandhi’s promise of a vaguely-defined ‘Swaraj’ within a year also stimulated wild hopes of a sudden total change.

Value addition: from the sources

Official assessments of Gandhi

“Gandhi is daily transfiguring the imagination of masses of ignorant men with visions of an early millennium”.

“The currency which Mr. Gandhi’s name has acquired even in the remotes villages is astonishing no one seems to know quite who he is…but it is an accepted fact that what he says is so, and what he orders must be done…the real power of his name is perhaps to be traced back to the idea that it was he who got be-dakhli (illegal eviction) stopped in Pratapgarh”.

These extracts from contemporary official sources illustrate the kind of rumours that circulated in the early days of the Gandhian movement, and the ways in which rumours helped to create, ‘from below’ as it were, a more radical image of Gandhi.

Source: A sub-divisional officer from Champaran 29 April 1917; A C.I.D report, of India Home Political Deposit 19th February 1921, No 13. With author’s comments.

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In 1919, Gandhi launched his first all-India movement directed against the which had sought to extend time restrictions on even after the war was over. This included provisions for special courts and detention without trial for a year. The other major grievance, which directly concerned Muslims, was the imposition of very harsh peace terms on Ottoman Turkey which had been on the losing side in the War. This became the basis of the in defense of the Ottoman sultan (who had the prestigious title of Khalifa, the head of the global ). Muslims of course also shared the other grievances of Indians and the result was an unprecedented degree of Hindu-Muslim unity during the Khilafat-Non-cooperation movement of 1919- 1922.

The arbitrary extension of wartime restrictions on civil rights by the official committee headed by Rowlatt was bitterly opposed by all sections of Indian political opinion. It was Gandhi, however, who suggested the methods for an effective and peaceful form of protest that would draw in all categories of Indians. The initial suggestion was a fairly mild one, of volunteers courting arrest by publicly selling pamphlets declared to be illegal by the British - hence the term commonly used for the movement, ‘Rowlatt Satyagraha’. Gandhi soon added a suggestion of an all India hartal which implied closing of shops and other business establishments. It was fixed for a Sunday and Gandhi was careful to stipulate that workers who might have jobs to do on that day should ask the permission of their employers before they stopped work. As always he was very careful about keeping controls on workers.

What happened afterwards, however, was an unprecedented popular upsurge, particularly in cities and towns, especially in Delhi, Punjab and some other areas. Nothing like this had been seen after 1857. The British were particularly frightened by the many instances of Hindu-Muslim-Sikh unity. They reacted with vicious repression and brutality.

On 13 April 1919, large crowds had come to attend a fair in an enclosed park called Jallianwalla bagh at . There was nothing political or violent about this crowd, but the British had been made nervous by the unusual degree of Hindu- Muslim unity in the previous movement: members of the two communities even drank from the same cups demonstratively to signify the end of the purity-pollution that had separated them. Suddenly and without warning, General Dyer, the British commander, opened fire on the crowds who had gathered peacefully in Jallianwalla bagh. Official figures reported that 379 were killed. Unofficial estimates were much higher. It was followed by weeks of brutal repression. Indians were made to crawl down a lane in Amritsar where an English woman had been insulted.

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Figure 9.2.1: Title page of Rashtriya Sangit Julmi Daayar – Jallianwalla Bagh, in Hindi, by Manohar Lal Shukla, , 1922

Source: Reprinted in Metcalf, Barbara D. and Thomas R. Metcalf. 2008. A Concise History of Modern India. : Cambridge University Press, 170.

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Figure 9.2.2: An artist’s impression of the massacre at on April 13. 1919

Source: Nehru Museum Library, Photo Archives, New Delhi

The Indian response was the Non-cooperation- Khilafat movement of 1919-1922. Gandhi called for this all India protest against what he branded as ‘the Punjab wrong’ and the Khilafat wrong. This involved boycott of British imports, titles, and colleges, courts and elections. The response was patchy. Not many lawyers, for instance, gave up their professions, and many of the students who had initially gone out of government schools and colleges went back after a time. The educational boycott was associated with the organization of alternative national schools and colleges. Thus emerged, for instance, the Jamia Milia Islamia in Delhi as a nationalist alternative to the pro-British Anglo- Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh.

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Figure 9.2.3: Gandhi with Ali brothers

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

But once again the radical hopes which had been aroused by Non-cooperation – Khilafat found their most militant expression in the numerous movements with which Gandhi and the Congress had little to do: working class strikes, peasant’s agitations, adivasi movements. Poor people fervently believed that Swaraj would definitely come in a year if they obeyed Gandhi’s commands and that Swaraj would resolve all their problems. Women participated on a large scale, courting arrest and going to prison in an unprecedented manner. The economic boycott proved particularly effective, and imports of Lancashire goods went down sharply.

Gandhi hesitated for a long time about extending the boycott of foreign goods to non- payment of taxes. He was afraid that if landlords refused to pay revenue to the , their tenants might stop paying rent to landlords. This would usher in agrarian class conflict. While he wanted to economically punish the colonial state and British business groups, he did not want any upset in Indian agrarian relations. He was, nonetheless, moving towards a selective use of a no-revenue movement, however, when he ordered an abrupt calling off the entire movement following a terrible incident. In February 1922, in a village called Chauri-Chaura in Gorakhpur in the United Provinces (present day ) a crowd provoked by official oppression surrounded and burnt the local police-

10 Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi Leaders and Followers: Gandhi and the Making of Indian Nationalism station, burning alive twenty-two Indian policemen. A horrified Gandhi immediately called off the entire movement, and Non-cooperation came to an abrupt halt. Even if other Congress leaders and political activists did not like the retreat, they obeyed Gandhi’s decision, as did masses of ordinary participants. This was the other side of the cult of the Mahatma. Rumours had spread about Gandhi, making people believe that since he was a great and holy man, whatever he said and ordered needed to be obeyed.

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

Source: Amin, Shahid. 2006. Event, Metaphor, Memory: , 1922-1992. New Delhi: Penguin.

The movement showed how successfully Gandhi had reorganized the Congress: with his drive for mass membership, rural bases with welfare programmes and the use of the spinning wheel to create small scale livelihoods, along with his personal charisma. It was now a vast but strongly organized body with a centralized working committee and local and provincial bodies, capable of running disciplined and non violent mass movements all over the country.

Despite its wide reach during its peak, the appeal of the movement did have certain limits. Untouchable (whom Gandhi would later rename as Harijans) for instance were not always enthusiastic, for they felt that their immediate oppressors were upper caste against whom the British could even provide occasional support. Gandhi from the beginning did condemn untouchablility, but for a long time he did not attack the caste system as a whole. In some of his speeches in the late 1920’s in South India, he even praised it. Here lay major problems for the future.

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The sudden calling off of Non-cooperation came as a deep disappointment to many and resulted in a variety of internal tensions. Hindu-Muslim conflicts which had stopped during the height of Non-cooperation- Khilafat movement began on an enhanced scale in the mid-1920s. But there were also more positive alternative tendencies that emerged in this political vacuum that the calling off of Non cooperation had left. The labour movement, for instance, gathered strength in the mid and late 1920’s. Internationally, too, the post war years were a period of radicalization, particularly with the Russian Revolution of 1917 attracting many in India. The early years of the were inspiring for them. They began with the abrogation of unequal imperial treaties which Tsarist had signed to enhance its territories and power. Such a voluntary abdication of imperial gains won the hearts of many colonized Indians. Socialist and Communists groups started to develop in various parts of India and, there was a massive - and initially successful - strike of Bombay textile workers in 1928. They were led by the Girni Kamgar ‘Lal Bavta’ (Red ) Union. This new and growing Left pressed for an uncompromising struggle against colonial rule with which it combined social and economic demands in the interest of workers and peasants.

The Congress led national movement had come to a standstill after Chauri-Chaura. The period of stagnation was marked by communal riots in many parts of the country. Even at the time of Non-cooperation-Khilafat itself, there began an anti-landlord peasant movement in the Malabar district of Kerala which was initially directed against oppressive Hindu money lenders and traders. This was the Mapila uprising. It then turned into a violent which developed communal dimensions. As always, Hindu and Muslim kept pace with each other. In the mid 20’s for instance, an aggressive Hindu outfit called the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) was founded in Nagpur with a bitterly anti- Muslim programme.

A revival of the national movement began in the late 1920s. The British began to plan a fresh round of constitutional changes. In 1919, in the context of the British promise of self-government in the near future, a system of dyarchy had been instituted. This had made certain ministries at the provincial level responsible to elected legislatures. The reforms promised that a review of this system would be done after a decade. To enable this, a commission was appointed in 1927 to consider a new round of constitutional reforms. Headed by Sir John Simon, it, however, did not include a single Indian member. Indian politicians were furious. There were huge demonstrations in many towns, calling for the boycott of the , and chanting the slogan of “Go back Simon”. As the boycott movement spread, the Congress began to prepare itself for another spate of mass struggles.

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Figure 9.2.5: Simon Commission boycott

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

There were other kinds of anti colonial initiatives that lay outside Gandhi’s control and defied his mandate of non violence. There was a revival of terrorism among radical minded youth. Interestingly, some of these terroristic groups also began to draw close to socialist ideals. The key figure among them was who, in 1928, founded the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. The revolutionary terrorists of the Swadeshi era had been markedly Hindu in their ideas and language. Bhagat Singh, however, marked a major departure here. Condemned to death and awaiting execution for his of a British official, he had come to some extent under the sway of Marxists ideas. One of his last writings was called: Why I Am An Atheist. It broadened the scope of revolutionary thinking beyond secret assassination and questioned social power and domination by .

Civil disobedience and Gandhi, 1930-34

By the late 1920s, therefore, pressures began to mount, asking for a fresh round of nationalist struggle with more radical political and socio economic demands. The earlier Gandhian slogan of Swaraj had been deliberately ambiguous. It could range from self government within the British to complete independence. But Gandhi had not

13 Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi Leaders and Followers: Gandhi and the Making of Indian Nationalism precisely spelt out its exact meaning, leaving different groups free to imagine it in different ways. After much hesitation and pressure from his more radical associates like and , Gandhi finally accepted the demand for complete independence - - at the Congress in late December 1929. A decision was taken to adopt this resolution along with the hoisting of what had been chosen as the national tri-colour flag. It was hoisted at meetings all over the country on 26 January, 1930. That is why the latter date is still observed as .

But what would be the methods of the new movement, which was to hopefully culminate in the winning of complete independence? Gandhi thought for a long time about possible methods. Eventually, he came forward with a decision which seemed to many to be an anti- climax, but which eventually proved brilliantly effective. This was the salt satyagraha. The British had made the production of salt a government monopoly, thereby making it quite expensive because of the salt tax. Salt appeared a trivial issue for average urban middle class Indians, but it meant something very different for the poor. It was an essential item of food and the high price made it a great burden. Salt was again something that could be manufactured very easily, collected without additional cost from sea water. The making of it would violate the state law which allowed only government agencies to produce salt. It would signify the peoples’ defiance as much as it would address the needs of the poor. Making and selling of illicit salt in the open became the predominant form of the movement. In the famous Dandi March (12 March- 6 ), Gandhi traveled from his Gujarat ashram down to the sea coast at Dandi to collect salt from the beach and bands of volunteers grew larger and larger on his way. His example was followed by Congress leaders and volunteers all along the Indian coastlines. Contraband salt was sold in cities, towns and villages, as an act of open, deliberate mass level provocation, but peaceful in its form.

The salt satyagraha marked the beginning of the Civil Disobedience movement. This was in some ways more radical from the beginning than Non-cooperation. Unlike the latter, it involved a deliberate violation of the law and was not just a refusal to render voluntary services. In some areas, this was accompanied with non payment of village level chowkidari taxes as well. The British met the movement with massive lathi charges, arrests and brutal repression.

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Figure 9.2.6: Gandhi breaking the salt law, Dandi, April 6. 1930

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

At the same time Civil Disobedience suffered from some inadequacies that were not present in the earlier movement. It did not coincide with any major labour upsurge unlike what had happened in 1919-1922. Muslim participation was considerably less than before, except in the North West Frontier Provinces where Abdul Gafar Khan, called Frontier Gandhi, led a powerful yet peaceful mass movement. But many Muslims had been alienated by Gandhi’s unilateral decision to stop Non- Cooperation, and there was now no parallel Khilafat Movement. Hindu-Muslim relations had been strained also by the Congress insistence on a unitary form of governance in future independent India. Many Muslims wanted a more federal up where Muslim majority provinces would have a greater . A second crucial limitation concerned the Dalits. An autonomous was gathering strength among them under the leadership of B.R. Ambedkar. Despite gestures of occasional goodwill, upper caste Hindus had not fundamentally changed their attitudes about purity-pollution taboos. Gandhi himself

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condemned untouchablility, but still found much to praise in the caste system as a whole.

Civil Disobedience, particularly in the form of non payment of taxes, gained enormous popular support, particularly among many peasants, since Gandhi encouraged non payment of revenue. What strengthened the movement was its coincidence with a very sharp fall in the prices of agricultural products due to the world economic depression of the early 1930’s. The fall hit hard particularly the relatively better off peasants who had a surplus to sell in the market to meet the heavy burdens of revenue and rent payments. This was in contrast to the post World War rise in prices, which had hit the poorer peasants and the labourers the hardest. Gandhi, however, refused to go in for no rent movements as he did not want to sharpen in any way class tensions within Indian society between landlords and tenants.

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

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

Another point of contrast with the previous movement was that this time Gandhi did not call any halt due to individual or local cases of violence. The movement was by and large peaceful though there were stray cases of attacks and conflicts. There were violent upsurges outside the Congress movement. In April 1930, for instance, a revolutionary group headed by carried out a daring raid on the armory of in . There were also more or less violent mass upheavals in and Sholapur.

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Apart from peasants, Civil Disobedience also involved large numbers of urban students. The presence of women was notable and they would become local ‘dictators’ in Civil Disobedience when the men were put behind bars. Boycott of British goods, particularly Lancashire imports, proved very effective. Civil Disobedience did not quite have the spontaneous mass appeal of its predecessor, for Gandhi now was a well known figure. The earlier process of radicalization of mass movements through rumours about Gandhi could no longer operate so powerfully. The Congress was much more organized now, creating the possibility of effective but also tightly controlled mass movements.

Mass courting of arrest by volunteers, women as well as men, led to a flooding of the prisons. The Government got seriously worried and Irwin sent out feelers for talks in early February 1931. Somewhat surprisingly, Gandhi quickly accepted the offer and concluded what is called the Gandhi-Irwin Pact in March 1931. A somewhat uneasy truce began which continued till the end of 1931. Some detailed research has indicated that as the movement seemed to be gathering strength, business groups had become restive due to frequent hartals and the general disruption of normal commerce. The Congress agreed to a fresh round of negotiations, which took the form of a Round Table Conference in in early 1931, where Indian leaders of all political groups participated along with British officials and politicians. The Conference however failed, mainly because of sharp disagreements among Indian leaders. Not only Muslim leaders but notably also Ambedkar refused to accept the Congress and Gandhi as the sole spokesman for the country. The story goes that when Gandhi made an appeal to Ambedkar to unite with the Congress in the name of the country, Ambedkar responded with the statement, “Mahatmaji I have no country”. An angry but understandable reply, given the conditions of extreme oppression and inequality in which masses of Dalits had to live.

The breakdown of the Round Table Conference was followed in 1932 by a second round of Civil Disobedience. Here the British were clearly on the offensive, the Congress was declared illegal and massive repression was unleashed. Even though the movement was not formally called off, Gandhi had shifted attention after the mid to what he called his Harijan programme, trying to meet grievances through minor reforms like the opening of wells and other facilities to untouchables without, however, very much success.

In a sense, then, the Civil Disobedience movement failed, for British political structures of domination remained as before. But, underneath, Gandhian movements had firmly established the Congress as the real political authority in the minds of people. When elections were called in 1935, the Congress won an overwhelming victory in most provinces, benefiting evidently from memories of Civil Disobedience and the halo of martyrdom and suffering that the non violent struggle led to. In 1935, a new constitution had come into effect under which the provinces got somewhat greater autonomy and ministries responsible to elected legislatures were constituted. The Congress was able to form ministries in most parts of the country.

The developments of the 1920s and 30s had stimulated a variety of radical movements and pressures within and outside the Congress. , for instance, was no longer a creed espoused only by a handful of extreme radicals. Pressure groups had emerged within the Congress demanding more Left-oriented politics, and these were occasionally

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stimulated by younger leaders within the Congress, notably Jawaharlal Nehru and, to some extent, Subhas Chandra Bose.

August 1942 and ‘Quit India’

The of August 1942 is often seen as the peak point of Gandhian nationalism. In many ways it marked a significant departure from the preceding decades. It developed in the very specific context of a particular phase of the Second World War, when Britain seemed to be on the point of losing the war against the . Japan seemed poised to invade India. Subhas Chandra Bose, the left leaning within the Congress, had secretly left the country, contacted and visited Axis leaders and had set up a government in in alliance with Japan. He recruited from Indian prisoners of war and built up the Fauj. Gandhi, too, was in a rather new mood at this time. For once he was apparently less worried by possibilities of violence within his movement, calling heroic resistance against the state leonine even if it turned violent.

A number of efforts were made by the Congress just before 1942 to negotiate with the British, offering wartime cooperation in exchange for the promise of post war independence. All such negotiations, notably the of 1942, had failed. The British wanted to use the war situation, with a large Allied army situated on Indian soil, to crush the Congress and nationalism once and for all. There was much provocation, then, for the famous Quit India Resolution passed by the Congress on 8/9 August 1942. An additional factor may have been a feeling in wide circles among nationalists that Britain was on the point of losing the war, and Japan might well successfully take over India. To forestall it, the Congress should make a bid for immediate independence at all costs.

The unprecedented scale, as well as considerable mass and individual violence of the 1942 upsurge had their roots also in general suffering and discontent. War had once again brought in new miseries, especially for the ordinary people. There were shortages of essential goods, a massive rise in prices and, the misbehavior at times of British and Allied soldiers added to the discontent. All this created a fertile soil for a huge uprising.

Immediately after the Congress resolution of August 1942, the British unleashed massive repression, arresting Gandhi and a very large number of Congress activists all over the country. The Indian reaction was equally extreme, and quite often violent. Students and other middle class groups, along with peasants were the most prominent. Parallel were set up in some parts of the country, notably in some regions of Bihar, UnitedProvinces, Satara in Maharashtra, and Midnapur in Bengal. Workers were also active in many places, particularly in Bombay and Jamshedpur. Even capitalists seemed at times to be quite sympathetic, no doubt thinking, like others, that Britain would lose the War. Left leaning Congress groups, notably the Congress Socialists led by Jaya Prakash Narayan and were particularly militant. Communists kept away from this upsurge. They were afraid of doing anything that would in practice help the powers in a war in which the Soviet Union seemed to be in mortal danger.

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Taking full advantage of the war situation, the British unleashed enormous repression, and were able to suppress the Quit India upsurge in a matter of weeks, except in some scattered pockets of the country, especially where parallel governments did function for a time.

1942 was accompanied and followed by enormous problems and crises. This reached its climax in the devastating . This was rooted not so much in absolute scarcity, as in profiteering, and enormous black markets, and general official indifference and inefficiency. British rule seemed to be ending amidst enormous mass suffering. It would also leave behind a deeply divided people as its legacy.

Figure 9.2.8: Protest during Quit India movement

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

For despite its enormous scale, the Quit India movement did have one major limitation as compared with its predecessors. Muslim participation on the whole remained low. Many Muslims had been upset by the way the provincial governments, most of them dominated by the Congress, seemed to often favour Hindu groups and discriminate against Muslims. The demand of many Muslim political groups for greater provincial autonomy within a loose federal structure consequently gathered strength. The resolution passed by the Lahore session of the Muslim League in March 1940 needs to be seen in this context. It demanded that Muslim majority areas in the North-western and Eastern parts of India should be grouped together to constitute ‘Independent States’. The resolution did not really use the terms ‘’ or ‘Partition’, but it soon began to be widely called the Pakistan resolution. The ban and repression unleashed on the

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Congress in the wake of the Quit India movement left the political field for some years open to the Muslim League. The Pakistan demand did become very popular among large number of Muslims. As always, Muslim and Hindu communalisms fed into each other. The mid 40s saw a climax in communal violence symbolized by the Calcutta riots of August 1946.

1942 had apparently ended in British victory, for repression had crushed the nationalist rebellion. But subsequent events were soon to show that this was only a temporary British victory. British leaders by and large realized that a negotiated transfer of power to Indians was more or less inevitable after the War ended. The exceptional measures of repression through which August 1942 had been crushed would be impossible to sustain in the post war world. The British economy had been exhausted by the war. In addition, anti-imperialist sentiments were riding high worldwide in the years immediately after 1945. So, did have to come to an end, leaving behind a divided India and a people at war among themselves.

Gandhian movements: aspects and tensions

The historical significance of Gandhi on not just an Indian but on a world scale goes beyond his role – often controversial - as the leading figure in a series of anti-colonial movements. The figure of Gandhi remains relevant to many movements down to our own times.

Gandhi, at times, has been portrayed as a spokesman of struggle against Western cultural domination. Hind Swaraj,for instance, can be read as a tirade against Western materialist civilization: with its denunciation of railways, lawyers, even doctors and hospitals. But it would be an oversimplification which presents Gandhian ideals as part of a simple dichotomy between West and non-West. Hind Swaraj, in fact, also includes much praise of Englishmen, and the rejection of railways for instance, cannot be taken too literally. Gandhi, it may be noted, did not hesitate to travel frequently on trains or use other modern means of communication like journalism which he abused in his book. His was not a simple, obscurantist rejection of the West.

Yet the cultural critique developed by Gandhi does have a contemporary relevance, if it is seen as a renunciation of a blind worship of machines and material success. Here, Gandhian criticism links up with contemporary environmental and ecological radicalism and alternative models of sustainable development which are oriented towards welfare of people and environment and not just the growth of commodity production. Non violent mass satyagraha, as a tool for action, also remains relevant to many. One may cite the Chipko movement of the 1970s in which peasants and women in the western Himalayan hills defended tress against deforestation by literally hugging them: or the Narmada Bachao Andolan, especially in Madhya Pradesh which was directed against the construction of huge dams which threaten floods and take away the land held by peasants for many and lead to large scale destruction of forests. Internationally, the best known examples would include the anti and liberation struggles in South Africa under which began with quasi-Gandhian non- violence but later was forced to take up arms. Or the Afro-American movements for civil rights in the USA led by Martin Luther King. There have also been numerous environmental movements with some affinities with Gandhian ideals and methods: the

20 Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi Leaders and Followers: Gandhi and the Making of Indian Nationalism so called Movements in many parts of the West, notably, the Green Party in Germany led by Petra Kelly which for some time became a significant electoral force.

Value addition: from the sources

Non-violence

“When a person claims to be non-violent, he is expected not to be angry with one who has injured him. He will not wish him harm; he will wish him well; he will not swear at him; he will not cause him any physical hurt. He will put up with all the injury to which he is subjected by the wrongdoer. Thus non-violence is complete innocence. Complete non-violence is complete absence of ill will against all that lives. It therefore embraces even sub-human life not excluding obnoxious insects or beasts. They have not been created to feed our destructive propensities. If we only knew the mind of the Creator, we should find their proper place in His creation. Non-violence is therefore, in its active form, goodwill towards all life. It is pure Love. I read it in Hindu scripture, in the Bible, in the Koran’’.

This extract indicates some of the wider dimensions of Gandhian non-violence. Its extension to all forms of life indicates some of Gandhi’s affinities with notions of environmental conservation which has become an increasingly central issue worldwide.

Source: , 9-3-1922

With author’s comment.

So far, we have looked at the broad sweep of the Gandhian movements and . It may be useful now to analyze these in terms of the specific social groups that were involved and the tensions that emerged in their mutual relationships. A recurrent pattern was the dual dimension within Gandhian and movements. Gandhi without doubt inspired and energized massive movements but he also repeatedly restrained or even halted them abruptly. He staunchly discouraged class conflict among Indians even when there were abuses of power by the upper classes. The contradictions here, at once inspiring and curbing movements, frequently led to pressures from below, some of which at times sought to go beyond the limits of the Gandhian leadership.

We may now look briefly at five dimensions within this contradictory phenomenon, in terms of industrial workers, peasants, caste, , communalism and nationalism.

Labour

One of the earliest movements led by Gandhi concerned industrial workers: the Ahmedabad textile workers strike of 1918. Yet in some ways Gandhi seems always to have been nervous and hesitant about encouraging labour unrest. The hesitation no doubt was related to his fear of contributing to internal tensions within Indian society. Yet the way in which he sought to tackle such issues generally tended to have a tilt towards the more dominant groups within such relationships.

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A striking example here was the way in which he backed no tax or no revenue movements, but had enormous hesitation about calling for non-payment of rent. Non- payment of revenue would hit the colonial rulers, but the recurrent problem for Gandhi seems to have been the fact that no rent movements would hit the interest of indigenous landlords or locally dominant groups in the countryside. So he was prepared to countenance non-payment of rent rarely, and always with great hesitation and delays. The abrupt halts which he sometimes called for in movements, as we have seen were often related also to such class dimensions.

The Ahmedabad textile strike of 1918 provides one example. It made clear Gandhi’s refusal to support class struggle between workers and employers - a hesitation enhanced in the Ahmedabad case as mill-owners like Ambalal Sarabhai and Kasturbhai Lal Bhai were personally close to Gandhi. More generally, Gandhi developed a theory of . i.e. that capitalists, possibly landlords too, hold their properties in trust for workers and peasants subordinated to them. Wealth belongs to them only because they will contribute to the uplift of the producers. This was Gandhi’s alternative to theories of class struggle, which became increasingly influential from around the 1920s and 1930s among Left leaning groups in India. It did prove on the whole effective in Ahmedabad. In the wake of the 1918 strike, the Textile Labour Association that was set up followed Gandhian lines of class peace rather than class struggle. As a result this organization never joined the All India Trade Union Congress that was set up in 1920 and which came to include a large variety of groups with different leanings, Congress as well as Socialists or Communists. Gandhi divided the Association into different craft groups and allowed for arbitration of disputes, generally under his personal instruction.

Gandhi discouraged strikes against employers which would include European as well as Indian industrialists. He was critical of industrial production but he did not want workers to disrupt it in any way. Even during peak points in nationalist movements, he was not in favour of political strikes among workers in sympathy with nationalist demands and grievances.

Peasants

As said earlier, Gandhi would, on occasion, allow and organize no revenue movements, where landowners stopped paying taxes to the state. One of the most effective of these no revenue movements was the of 1928 in Gujarat. Excessive land revenue demands from peasants led to a very successful movement which withheld such payment, even when peasants were deprived of their holdings. But even at the height of the Depression in the 1930s, when agrarian prices crashed, leading to peasant bankruptcy, Gandhi would not allow peasants to stop rent payments to landlords, nor would he try to enlarge the rights of agricultural workers or sharecroppers.

Despite his evident hesitation on issues of no rent movements and his tendency to call off movements at points where they seem to be turning not just or necessarily violent but socially radical, Gandhi was able to mobilize peasants on an unprecedented and unequalled scale throughout his life. To some extent, even his hesitations and restraints may have helped, for they did contribute to unity in the countryside, where class tensions were often less clear cut, and elements of were sometimes present in relations between landlords and tenants, peasants and agricultural labourers, high and low castes. Moreover, his followers set up ashrams in rural areas, setting up arbitration

22 Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi Leaders and Followers: Gandhi and the Making of Indian Nationalism courts to help resolve rural disputes, and organized small scale income generating projects. did augment peasant livelihoods, in however small a way.

Yet the breaks, hesitations, and compromises did stimulate criticism and resentment. In a recurrent pattern, radical groups that were critical of the Gandhian message of class peace and trusteeship began to spring up to address issues of landlord exploitation which Gandhi would not touch. Organizations like Kisan Sabhas developed from the 1920s onwards in many parts of the country, pressing for greater tenancy rights and critical of Gandhian ideology and methods from a Left perspective.

Dalits and caste

Gandhi was consistent in his condemnation of untouchablility from the beginning. But about caste in general he tended to be much more hesitant and statements are not rare, particularly in his earlier phases, that were or could be read as praise for caste as a whole. Varnashramaor the four fold division of society into hereditary occupations, carrying strong purity-pollution taboos, was described as a structure that helped to maintain social peace and reduce social conflict. He went so far as to occasionally praise Brahmans as the finest flowers of Hindu and Indian civilization. He discouraged inter caste marriages or change of caste based occupation.

At the same time, in what can be seen as an overall pattern, there seems to be a tendency towards greater radicalism over time. Here the development of the Ambedkar alternative provided both a threat as well as a stimulus for Gandhi’s thinking. It became increasingly clear from the 1920s that among the untouchables there was a growing appeal of such more radical condemnation of caste as a whole, as an alternative to Gandhian or Congress ideology. Gandhi liked to call the untouchables Harijans or children of God. They themselves began to name themselves Dalits, the most oppressed. This was a deliberate break with Gandhi’s efforts. The Gandhian Congress developed over time a complex pattern of relationships with Ambedkar and other radical Dalit leaders. It included both conflict and compromise or even partial unity.

In 1932, the Congress determinedly opposed Ambedkar’s demand for separate electorates for untouchables and Gandhi went on a fast unto death to oppose it. He also stayed aloof from Ambedkar’s militant struggles to reclaim, for Dalit access, public spaces that lay alongside the temples from which Dalits were barred. Gandhi preferred that upper castes should realize their guilt and abolish themselves, rather than Dalits fight it with state help. Moreover, he insisted at the Round Table Conference that he and the Congress represented Dalits adequately and they needed no other organization or leader outside the Congress.

However, things changed as Gandhi increasingly realized that his hopes were not realizable. In the mid-40s, the Congress supported Ambedkar’s election to the Constituent Assembly, and subsequently went on to put him in principal charge of drafting the Constitution of independent India. This helped to make that basic document much more socially radical than it otherwise would have been.

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Women and gender

Initiative and pressures critical of patriarchal domination had been the central theme of so-called social reform initiatives and movements throughout the 19th century, beginning with Ram Mohun Roy with his campaign against sati or widow immolation. In the late 19th and early however, there was a tendency towards a certain decline in such social reform movements, as many anti-colonial nationalists, notably figures like Tilak and much of the Swadeshi movements against the partition of Bengal of 1905 thought that such reform meant seeking the support of the colonial state and therefore should be postponed or abandoned, and priority had to be given to the anti- colonial struggle. There was thus a wave of Hindu revivalist pressures, and praise of the allegedly unique position of the chaste Hindu women and Hindu patriarchal values. There was therefore even at times a hostile relationship between the more aggressive types of anti-colonial nationalism and criticism of and support of emancipation of women. Some signs of a revival of more reformists attitudes could be seen however from the 1910s, as for instance, in some of the writings of in the immediate post-Swadeshi years. From the early decades of the 20th century, women began to set up their own organizations and gradually came to lead the agenda of social reform.

Gandhi’s own attitudes towards women, gender and patriarchal values were highly complex. He would ask women to be meek and submissive, to accept their sufferings without confrontation or rebellion; yet, to remain morally pledged to the right values, even if the family punished them for their rectitude. In this they would be the model for his satyagrahis. He revered his mother’s piety and modelled himself on her qualities, thus learning to nurture, nurse and feed his associates and cultivating what are called feminine virtues. His gentleness and non aggression made him a very different sort of man and he encouraged his followers to be masculine in that different mode. At the same time, he was authoritarian in his family life, often forcing his wife and children to obey him despite their misgivings. His emphasis on perfect celibacy for satyagrahis imposed a lot of emotional stress on his associates.

Yet, unlike the bulk of the social reformists of the 19th century Gandhi did call for the active participation of women in political movements and the anti-colonial struggle in general. In 1917 for instance, at a political conference in Godhra in Gujarat, he noticed that there were no women in the audience and made the remark to the men assembled there that they were walking on one foot. Women participated in all aspects of Gandhian movements, picketing shops to impose boycott of foreign goods, courting arrest, facing lathi–charges. Going to prison was previously considered a disgrace particularly for women. It now became a symbol of . This can be seen both in the Non- cooperation and Civil Disobedience movements, particularly in the latter when thousands of women participated actively. It seems that the religious appeal which was evident in many aspects of Gandhian nationalism was helpful in this context, for, political activism was often projected as a religious duty. At the same time, a relatively negative aspect should also be noted. Women who had played notably non- traditional roles in course of the anti-colonial struggle sometimes slipped back to more conservative roles and values when that era was over. Still the active public role of women including large number of peasants and women from highly conventional middle class families needs to be emphasized.

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Figure 9.2.9: Women participation in Salt Satyagraha, 1930

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

Communalism and nationalism

From his South African days onwards, Gandhi was and remained a passionate believer in Hindu-Muslim unity. Possibly the fact that some of his earliest supporters of the anti- racists struggles in South Africa had been Muslim lawyers and traders contributed to the way in which anti-communalism became a part of his very being. Gandhi’s life thus ended in tragedy, often presented in terms of the acceptance of a . But the real tragedy was not the acceptance of a separate Pakistan but the communal holocaust that preceded, accompanied, and followed it. For Gandhi, political divisions were much less significant than the division of hearts. The last years of his life were devoted almost totally to the struggle against all forms of communalism, whether Muslim or Hindu. Gandhi’s interventions often took the form of going on a fast unto death. In Calcutta in late 1946 and early ‘47, and in Delhi just before his murder, such fasts did succeed remarkably in ending violence for the time being. But even these acts of courage and self sacrifice did not bank the flames permanently, as is evident in his own brutal murder on 30 January, 1948 in a conspiracy organized by Hindu communalist groups.

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Figure 9.2.10: migration during partition

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

Gandhi spent the last weeks and months of his life desperately trying to end the communal violence, Hindu as much as Muslim, that had begun with what is called the Great Calcutta Killings of August 1946. Massive communal violence spread rapidly, virtually all across the sub-continent: Noakhali in East Bengal, numerous cities, towns and villages across Northern and Central India, Bihar, ultimately Delhi and Punjab. Horrified particularly by the news of many cases of rape being reported from Noakhali, Gandhi made his last major intervention, in what has been called the Mahatma’s finest hour. He went to riot- torn Noakhali refusing any police or military help, accompanied by a group of young men and women. He moved through villages unprotected, moving aside with his own hands sometimes the sticks and dirt which had been thrown on his path by the rioters. While he walked he was singing what had become his favorite song, “If no one heeds your call walk alone walk alone”. He spoke of peace and love to implacable Muslim communalists who gradually stopped their violence and began to attend his meetings.

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Value addition: from the sources

Talk to students

Calcutta, August 15, 1947.

Gandhiji explained in detail why the fighting must stop now. We had two states now, each of which was to have both Hindu and Muslim citizens. If that were so, it meant an end of the two- theory. Students ought to think and think well. They should do no wrong. It was wrong to molest an Indian citizen merely because he professed a different religion. Students should do everything to build up a new state of India which would be everybody’s . With regard to the demonstrations of fraternization he said:

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

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

On 30 , Gandhi was shot dead at a prayer meeting by , an activist for many years of the extreme Hindu communalist organization, the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh(RSS) which he left to join Mahasabha. At his trial, in a speech, entitled ‘May it please your honor’, Godse acknowledged Savarkar, principle ideologue of the entire Hindu Right, as his mentor. It is interesting that some scholars think that Savarkar may have attended the group meeting in London where Gandhi first presented Hind Swaraj. The murder of the Mahatma which deeply shocked the entire country, and indeed the world, did stop for a time the communal riots. But communalism has repeatedly revived and remains a terrible problem for the entire sub-continent.

9.2 Summary

• There are various historical approaches to understand Gandhi and his impact on the Indian national movement and different sections of Indian society.

• The context of South Africa is important in understanding how Gandhian ideas and methods of mobilization took shape.

• Gandhian strategy expanded the reach of nationalism to the masses both in cities as well as in the countryside to hitherto marginalized sections like women, peasants and workers.

• Non-violence and control from above by the leadership sought to ensure that mass nationalism was never out of effective control of the nationalist elites.

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• Various critiques of Gandhian strategy and ideology appeared from diverse sections like religious minorities, lower castes and from the oppressed classes.

• The legacy of mass nationalism had its ambiguities, for it coincided with and occasionally contributed to sectional religious formations like communalism.

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

• Gandhian ideology of non-violence and his critique of modern society have remained relevant in the present context not just for India but in many parts of the world.

9.2: Exercises

Essay questions

1) Examine the different historiographical approaches to Gandhian nationalism. 2) What was the importance of Gandhi’s early political activities in South Africa? 3) Gandhian mass movements were marked by control rather than empowerment of the masses. Comment 4) Examine the Gandhian approach to the issue of gender and caste discrimination. 5) Discuss Gandhi’s attitude towards movements of workers and peasants. 6) Examine the different implications of Gandhi’s combination of religion and politics. 7) Assess the Gandhian understanding of non-violence and Self Rule.

Objective questions

Question Number Type of question LOD

1 Match the following 1

Question

Match each event with the date: a) Rowlatt Act i) April 1919 b) Jallianwala bagh massacre ii) February 1922 c) iii) March 1919

Correct Answer / a) and iii), b)and i), c)and ii)

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Option(s)

Justification/ Feedback for the correct answer

The passing of the Rowlatt act was followed by the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Subsequentlly, Gandhi launched the non-cooperation movement which was called off due to violence at Chauri Chaura in 1922.

Resource/Hints/Feedback for the wrong answer

Reviewer’s Comment:

Question Number Type of question LOD

2 Match the following 1

Question

Match each Gandhian movement with the relevant time frame: a) Non-cooperation movement i) 1942 b) Civil Disobedience movement ii) 1930-34 c) Quit India movement iii) 1919-1922

Correct Answer / a) and iii), b)and ii), c) and i) Option(s)

Justification/ Feedback for the correct answer

Gandhi began his mass with the Non-cooperation movement. Civil disobedience was the second major movement. Quit India Movement being the last one witnessed far more violence then the previous two movements.

Resource/Hints/Feedback for the wrong answer

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Reviewer’s Comment:

Question Number Type of question LOD

3 Match the following 1

Question

Match the following individuals with the movement they led:

a) Nelson Mandela i) Green movement b) Martin Luther King ii) Narmada Bachao Andolan c) Petra Kelly iii) Anti Apartheid movement d) Medha Patkar iv) Civil rights movement

Correct Answer / a) and iii), b) and iv), c)and i), d) and ii) Option(s)

Justification/ Feedback for the correct answer

All these movement owed some of their ideals and methods from aspects of Gandhian philosophy.

Resource/Hints/Feedback for the wrong answer

Reviewer’s Comment:

Question Number Type of question LOD

4 Match the following 1

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Question

Match each person with the related event:

a) Surya Sen i) Khilafat movement b) Subhas Chandra Bose ii) Chittagong Raid c) Khan iii) d) Mohammed Ali iv)

Correct Answer / a) and ii), b)and iv), c)and iii), d) and i) Option(s)

Justification/ Feedback for the correct answer

Mohammed Ali joined Gandhi to fight for the Khilafat issue. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan remained part of Gandhian activities in North Western frontier and led the Khudai Khidmatgar group. Surya Sen was the leader of the famous while Subhas Chandra Bose led the first organized military to the colonial state by organizing the Indian National Army.

Resource/Hints/Feedback for the wrong answer

Reviewer’s Comment:

Question Number Type of question LOD

5 Match the following 1

Question

Match each of the following events with the correct date:

a) Quit India resolution i) March 1931

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b) Gandhi Irwin pact ii) August 1942

c) pact iii) September 1932 d) Purna Swaraj demand iv) December 1929

Correct Answer / a) and ii), b)and i), c) and iii), d) and iv) Option(s)

Justification/ Feedback for the correct answer

Resource/Hints/Feedback for the wrong answer

Reviewer’s Comment:

9.2 Glossary

Swaraj: self-governance Hind swaraj: Indian Purna swaraj: complete independence Swadeshi: of one’s own country Satyagraha: search for truth : non-violence Mahatma: great soul Harijan: children of God Dalit: ground down; the most oppressed; the untouchable castes

9.2 Further readings

Hardiman, David. 2003. Gandhi in His Time and Ours. New Delhi: Permanent Black.

Brown, Judith.1972. Gandhi’s Rise to Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Forbes, Geraldine. 1996. Women in Modern India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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

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