Comprehensive theory, key formulas, diagrams, and memory aids for Nationalism in India.
The growth of modern nationalism is intimately connected to the anti-colonial movement. People began discovering their unity in the process of their struggle with colonialism. The sense of being oppressed under colonial rule provided a shared bond that tied many different groups together. In India, as in many other colonies, the growth of modern nationalism is linked directly to the fight against British rule. The Indian National Congress, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, tried to forge these diverse groups together within one movement.
The First World War (1914-1918) created a new economic and political situation in India. It led to a huge increase in defense expenditure which was financed by war loans and increasing taxes. Customs duties were raised and income tax introduced. Through the war years, prices increased, leading to extreme hardship for the common people. Villages were called upon to supply soldiers, and the forced recruitment in rural areas caused widespread anger. In 1918-19 and 1920-21, crops failed in many parts of India, resulting in acute shortages of food. This was accompanied by an influenza epidemic. According to the census of 1921, 12 to 13 million people perished as a result of famines and the epidemic. It was at this stage that a new leader appeared and suggested a new mode of struggle.
Mahatma Gandhi returned to India in January 1915 from South Africa, where he had successfully fought the racist regime with a novel method of mass agitation, which he called satyagraha. The idea of satyagraha emphasized the power of truth and the need to search for truth. It suggested that if the cause was true, if the struggle was against injustice, then physical force was not necessary to fight the oppressor. After arriving in India, Mahatma Gandhi successfully organized satyagraha movements in various places. In 1917 he travelled to Champaran in Bihar to inspire the peasants to struggle against the oppressive plantation system. In 1917, he organized a satyagraha to support the peasants of the Kheda district of Gujarat. In 1918, Mahatma Gandhi went to Ahmedabad to organize a satyagraha movement amongst cotton mill workers.
Emboldened by this success, Gandhiji in 1919 decided to launch a nationwide satyagraha against the proposed Rowlatt Act. This Act had been hurriedly passed through the Imperial Legislative Council despite the united opposition of the Indian members. It gave the government enormous powers to repress political activities and allowed the detention of political prisoners without trial for two years. On 13 April 1919, the infamous Jallianwala Bagh incident took place. A large crowd gathered in the enclosed ground of Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. General Dyer entered the area, blocked the exit points, and opened fire on the crowd, killing hundreds. His object, as he declared later, was to 'produce a moral effect', to create in the minds of satyagrahis a feeling of terror and awe.
Seeing the violence spread, Mahatma Gandhi called off the movement. He realized the need to launch a more broad-based movement in India. He felt this could only be achieved by bringing Hindus and Muslims closer together. The First World War had ended with the defeat of Ottoman Turkey, and there were rumors that a harsh peace treaty was going to be imposed on the Ottoman emperor, the spiritual head of the Islamic world (the Khalifa). To defend the Khalifa’s temporal powers, a Khilafat Committee was formed in Bombay in March 1919. At the Calcutta session of the Congress in September 1920, Gandhi convinced other leaders of the need to start a Non-Cooperation Movement in support of Khilafat as well as for swaraj.
The Non-Cooperation-Khilafat Movement began in January 1921. It unfolded in stages. It began 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. Then, in case the government used repression, a full civil disobedience campaign would be launched.
Various social groups participated in the Non-Cooperation Movement, each with its own specific aspiration. All of them responded to the call of Swaraj, but the term meant different things to different people. * In the Towns: The movement started with middle-class participation in the cities. Thousands of students left government-controlled schools and colleges, headmasters and teachers resigned, and lawyers gave up their legal practices. * Rebellion in the Countryside: In Awadh, peasants were led by Baba Ramchandra, a sanyasi who had earlier been to Fiji as an indentured laborer. The movement here was against talukdars and landlords who demanded excessively high rents from peasants. * Tribal Peasants: In the Gudem Hills of Andhra Pradesh, a militant guerrilla movement spread in the early 1920s. The colonial government had closed large forest areas, preventing people from entering the forests to graze their cattle, or to collect fuelwood and fruits. This enraged the hill people. They were led by Alluri Sitaram Raju, who claimed that he had a variety of special powers and could survive even bullet shots. * Swaraj in the Plantations: For plantation workers in Assam, freedom meant the right to move freely in and out of the confined space in which they were enclosed, and it meant retaining a link with the village from which they had come.
In February 1922, Mahatma Gandhi decided to withdraw the Non-Cooperation Movement because he felt the movement was turning violent in many places, notably after the Chauri Chaura incident where a peaceful demonstration turned into a violent clash with the police.
By the late 1920s, Indian politics was shaped by two factors. The first was the effect of the worldwide economic depression. Agricultural prices began to fall from 1926 and collapsed after 1930. The second was the arrival of the Simon Commission in 1928, set up by the Tory government in Britain to look into the functioning of the constitutional system in India and suggest changes. The commission was greeted with the slogan ‘Go back Simon’ because it did not have a single Indian member.
In December 1929, under the presidency of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Lahore Congress formalized the demand of ‘Purna Swaraj’ or full independence for India. It was declared that 26 January 1930 would be celebrated as the Independence Day.
Mahatma Gandhi found in salt a powerful symbol that could unite the nation. Salt was something consumed by the rich and the poor alike, and it was one of the most essential items of food. The tax on salt and the government monopoly over its production, Gandhi declared, revealed the most oppressive face of British rule. Gandhi started his famous salt march accompanied by 78 of his trusted volunteers. 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 6 April he reached Dandi, and ceremonially violated the law, manufacturing salt by boiling sea water. This marked the beginning of the Civil Disobedience Movement. 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.
Not all social groups were moved by the abstract concept of swaraj. 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. But Mahatma Gandhi declared that swaraj would not come for a hundred years if untouchability was not eliminated. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who organized the dalits into the Depressed Classes Association in 1930, clashed with Mahatma Gandhi at the second Round Table Conference by demanding separate electorates for dalits. Gandhi began a fast unto death, believing that separate electorates would slow down the process of their integration into society. Ambedkar ultimately accepted Gandhi’s position and the result was the Poona Pact of September 1932, which gave the Depressed Classes reserved seats in provincial and central legislative councils, but they were to be voted in by the general electorate.
Nationalism spreads when people begin to believe that they are all part of the same nation, when they discover some unity that binds them together. This sense of collective belonging came partly through the experience of united struggles, but there were also a variety of cultural processes through which nationalism captured people’s imagination. History and fiction, folklore and songs, popular prints and symbols, all played a part in the making of nationalism. * Images of Bharat Mata: The identity of the nation came to be visually associated with the image of Bharat Mata, first created by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, who also wrote 'Vande Mataram'. * Folklore: In late-nineteenth-century India, nationalists began recording folk tales sung by bards and they toured villages to gather folk songs and legends, believing these tales gave a true picture of traditional culture that had been corrupted by outside forces. * Icons and Symbols: During the Swadeshi movement in Bengal, a tricolour flag (red, green and yellow) was designed, featuring eight lotuses representing eight provinces of British India, and a crescent moon, representing Hindus and Muslims.
By the end of the struggle, people from diverse backgrounds, despite their differing expectations, were united under the common banner of Indian nationalism, moving irrevocably toward independence.