This chapter examines the nationalist movement in India from 1915 to 1948, the period in which Mahatma Gandhi transformed the struggle for freedom. Gandhi returned from South Africa in January 1915 and, within a few years, converted the Congress from a middle-class organisation of the educated into a mass movement that reached peasants, workers, women and people of every caste and community. The chapter focuses on Gandhi's methods of satyagraha (non-violent resistance), his mass movements, and the ideas and institutions through which he worked.
The chapter is based on a distinctive set of sources: Gandhi's own writings, collected in the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, his correspondence, and the newspapers and accounts of his contemporaries, as well as the records of the state that watched and suppressed him. These sources allow the historian to trace the movement's progress in unusual detail - its preparation, its peaks, its crises and its compromises - and to see Gandhi both as a leader of a movement and as a man of ideas.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born at Porbandar in 1869, studied law in England, and spent two decades in South Africa fighting against the discrimination faced by Indians there, developing his methods of satyagraha. He returned to India in January 1915. For his first few years in India, Gandhi travelled widely, studying the country and its people, and he involved himself in local struggles such as those of the peasants of Champaran in Bihar (1917), the textile workers of Ahmedabad (1918) and the peasants of Kheda in Gujarat (1918).
These early movements were local and limited, but they established Gandhi's methods and his reputation. In the Champaran movement, Gandhi took up the cause of indigo cultivators against the planters; in Ahmedabad, he fasted in support of mill workers; and in Kheda, he supported the peasants' refusal to pay revenue in a year of scarcity. Gandhi's insistence on non-violence, on the leadership of the poor, and on the moral as well as political transformation of the struggle, made him a national figure by the time of the Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919.
In 1919, the British government passed the Rowlatt Act, which gave it sweeping powers to imprison political prisoners without trial. Gandhi called for a nationwide satyagraha against this "black act," and the response was dramatic: strikes, demonstrations and the closure of shops across the country. Gandhi's programme, which included a hartal (general strike) and prayer and fasting, marked the first all-India satyagraha under his leadership.
The movement was met with brutal repression. In April 1919, at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, General Dyer ordered his troops to fire on an unarmed crowd that had gathered for a peaceful meeting, killing hundreds and wounding over a thousand. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre shocked the country and the world, and it convinced many Indians that the empire could not be trusted to reform itself. Gandhi, deeply distressed, called off the satyagraha when it turned violent, acknowledging that the people were not yet ready for disciplined non-violent struggle.
The Non-Cooperation Movement was launched by Gandhi in 1920, in the context of the Khilafat agitation over the treatment of Turkey after the First World War and in protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and the betrayal of Indian hopes of self-government. The programme of non-cooperation included the surrender of titles and honours, the boycott of British goods, institutions and elections, and the refusal to cooperate with the colonial government in any way.
The movement was remarkable for its scale and for the social breadth of its support. Students boycotted schools and colleges, lawyers boycotted the courts, and the Swadeshi programme - the use of hand-spun khadi and the boycott of foreign cloth - transformed daily life. The movement reached its climax at the end of 1921, when Gandhi announced that he would lead the non-cooperation in the princely state of Bardoli. But the movement collapsed in February 1922, when a mob at Chauri Chaura, in Gorakhpur district of Uttar Pradesh, burned a police station and killed policemen, and Gandhi, horrified by the violence, called off the movement, refusing to continue a struggle that had abandoned non-violence.
The suspension of the movement in 1922 caused deep disillusionment among many Congressmen. Some, like C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru, formed the Swaraj Party in 1923 to contest elections and to enter the legislative councils, arguing that the councils could be used as arenas of struggle. Gandhi himself spent the next few years working on his programme of social reform: the removal of untouchability, the promotion of khadi and village industries, and the strengthening of the Congress as a mass organisation.
During the 1920s the Congress was reorganised, with provincial committees, a strengthened working committee and a mass base. Gandhi also engaged in the campaign against untouchability, renaming the "untouchables" as Harijans, "children of God," and demanding their admission to temples, wells and schools. The decade also saw the rise of new movements, including the growth of communist and socialist ideas, and the formation of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, whose members, like Bhagat Singh, chose violent methods that Gandhi could never accept.
The Civil Disobedience Movement was launched with the Dandi March of 1930. Gandhi and seventy-eight followers marched some 240 miles from Sabarmati ashram to the sea at Dandi, where he broke the salt law by making salt from seawater. The breaking of the salt law was a masterstroke: salt was used by rich and poor alike, the salt tax touched everyone, and the act of making salt was a simple, symbolic and legal challenge to the empire. The movement spread rapidly, with the boycott of foreign cloth, the refusal to pay revenue and the violation of the salt law across the country.
The movement saw the participation of women on a mass scale for the first time. Women picketed liquor and foreign cloth shops, joined the marches and courted arrest. Gandhi's own marches and his leadership in his ashram at Sabarmati gave the movement its spiritual and moral character. The movement was repressed with great severity, and Gandhi himself was arrested in May 1930, but the movement shook the empire and led, in 1931, to the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, by which the government agreed to release political prisoners and Gandhi agreed to suspend civil disobedience.
After the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, Gandhi attended the Second Round Table Conference in London in 1931, representing the Congress, but the conference failed to reach agreement on the future constitution. Meanwhile, the British government announced the Communal Award, which proposed separate electorates for the depressed classes (the "untouchables"). Gandhi, who was fasting in prison, opposed this as an attempt to divide Hindu society, and he entered into negotiations with Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.
The negotiations produced the Poona Pact of 1932, under which separate electorates for the depressed classes were replaced by reserved seats within the general Hindu electorate. The pact was a compromise: it did not give the depressed classes separate electorates, but it reserved seats for them and so ensured their representation. The Poona Pact is significant because it forced the Congress and the nation to confront the question of caste in the nationalist movement, though the issue remained deeply contested.
The Second World War brought the nationalist movement to a crisis. In 1939, the Viceroy declared India at war without consulting Indian leaders, and the Congress ministries resigned in protest. The British offered no clear promise of freedom, and in August 1942, Gandhi launched the Quit India Movement, demanding that the British "quit India" and leave the country to its own people. His call was "Do or Die," and he and all the Congress leaders were immediately arrested.
The movement spread rapidly, with strikes, sabotage and the formation of parallel governments in some areas, though it was brutally suppressed. The Quit India Movement was the largest and most widespread of all the Congress movements, and it demonstrated the depth of nationalist feeling. Gandhi himself was imprisoned, and it was during this period that he lost his wife, Kasturba, and his secretary Mahadev Desai, who died in prison. The movement, though crushed, convinced the British that they could not hold India by force, and it prepared the ground for the transfer of power.
The chapter also examines Gandhi's ideas. Satyagraha was not passive resistance but the active, non-violent assertion of truth (satya) and the power of the soul. Gandhi insisted that the means must match the ends: a free India could not be won by the methods of the oppressor. His vision of swaraj was not merely political independence but the building of a self-governing society, based on self-reliance, village industries and moral transformation. He was critical of modern industrial civilisation and of the domination of both the colonial state and the factory.
Gandhi also worked tirelessly on social reform: the removal of untouchability, Hindu-Muslim unity, the uplift of women, the promotion of khadi and village crafts, and the rejection of violence in all its forms. His fasts - for Hindu-Muslim unity, against untouchability, against the Communal Award - were instruments of moral pressure, and they repeatedly forced the nation and the government to confront the questions he raised.
The final years of Gandhi's life were dominated by the demand for Pakistan and the tragedy of Partition. The Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, demanded a separate state, and the Congress and the League failed to reach an agreement. The Cripps Mission (1942), the Cabinet Mission (1946) and the Mountbatten Plan (1947) all attempted to find a solution, but in the end, the British decided to divide the country. Gandhi opposed the partition of India with all his being, but he was overruled by his colleagues.
Partition was accompanied by terrible violence, as millions of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were displaced and massacred in the Punjab and Bengal. Gandhi, then in Calcutta and Delhi, did everything he could to stop the killing, fasting repeatedly for peace. His work earned him the hatred of some, and on 30 January 1948, Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist who blamed him for the partition. His death was the tragic close of a life devoted to non-violence and to the unity of India's peoples.
| Movement | Year | Programme / Character |
|---|---|---|
| Champaran | 1917 | Indigo cultivators vs planters |
| Rowlatt Satyagraha | 1919 | Against the Rowlatt Act; hartal |
| Non-Cooperation | 1920-1922 | Boycott of British goods, institutions; khadi |
| Civil Disobedience | 1930-1934 | Dandi March; salt law violation |
| Quit India | 1942 | "Do or Die"; demand for British withdrawal |
| Event | Date / Year | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Jallianwala Bagh massacre | April 1919 | Shocked India; convinced of imperial brutality |
| Chauri Chaura | February 1922 | Gandhi withdrew non-cooperation |
| Dandi March | 1930 | Launched civil disobedience |
| Gandhi-Irwin Pact | 1931 | Suspension of civil disobedience |
| Poona Pact | 1932 | Reserved seats instead of separate electorates |
| Independence and Partition | 1947 | Transfer of power; division of the country |
| Assassination of Gandhi | 30 January 1948 | End of Gandhi's life |
Mahatma Gandhi transformed the Indian national movement into a mass struggle, arming it with the novel and powerful weapon of satyagraha. From the local struggles of Champaran to the great national movements of non-cooperation, civil disobedience and Quit India, Gandhi drew into the freedom struggle peasants, workers, women and people of every caste and community, and he insisted that the means of struggle must be as pure as its ends. His fasts and his willingness to withdraw a movement when it turned violent gave Indian nationalism a moral character rare in the history of the world. Yet his last years were shadowed by the partition he had opposed and the communal violence he could not prevent, and his assassination in 1948 sealed his transformation from leader of a movement into a symbol of the nation's conscience.