Advent of Gandhi and Mass Mobilisation - Study Notes

Lesson summary

Gandhi, born at Porbandar in 1869, returned from South Africa in 1915 with the technique of Satyagraha, based on truth and non-violence. He accepted Gopala Krishna Gokhale as his political guru, toured India for a year and set up the Sabarmati Ashram at Ahmedabad. Through peasant and worker struggles he turned the Congress into a mass organisation.

Gandhi's experiments of Satyagraha

• Champaran (1917): indigo cultivators in Bihar were forced by European planters to grow indigo on 3/20th of their fields. With Rajendra Prasad, Mazharul Huq, Acharya Kripalani and Mahadeva Desai, Gandhi held an enquiry, defied the order to leave, and the committee's report freed the peasants.
• Ahmedabad mill strike (1918): Gandhi advised textile workers to strike for a 35 percent wage increase and fasted; the owners conceded.
• Kheda (1918): crops failed, yet revenue was demanded though the famine code allowed total remission below 25 percent yield. Gandhi, Vithalbhai Patel, Vallabhbhai Patel and Indulal Yagnik led the peasants; Gandhi withdrew when the government agreed to collect only from those who could pay.
• The Servants of India Society was founded by Gokhale in 1905, with headquarters in Pune.

Montagu-Chelmsford reforms (Indian Councils Act 1919)

• Dyarchy in the provinces: law and order and finance were reserved under the Governor; health, education and local self-government were transferred to elected Indian ministers.
• Bicameral centre: Legislative Assembly of 144 (41 nominated); Council of States of 60 (26 nominated).
• The Congress special session at Bombay (August 1918) called the scheme disappointing and unsatisfactory. Moderates under Surendranath Banerjee formed the Indian Liberal Federation.

The Non-Brahmin movement

• Jyoti Rao Phule's Gulamgiri (1872) and his Satyashodhak Samaj attacked Brahminism.
• Namasudra (Bengal and eastern India), Adidharma (North Western India), Satyashodhak (Western India) and Dravidian movements (South India).
• Two trends: Sanskritisation of the lower castes, and radical pro-poor peasant-labour movements.
• In the south Brahmins were 3.2% of the population but 72% of graduates; the Non-Brahmin Manifesto came at the end of 1916.
• Radical strands: the Dalit-Bahujan movement under Dr Ambedkar and the Self-Respect Movement under Periyar.

Non-Cooperation Movement

• Rowlatt Act (March 1919): imprisonment without trial. Gandhi's Satyagraha Sabha pledged to disobey it; hartal in March-April 1919.
• Jallianwala Bagh (13 April 1919): Dyer fired on a crowd protesting the arrest of Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew. Official dead 379, real figure over a thousand. Tagore renounced his knighthood. Udham Singh killed O'Dwyer in London on 30 March 1940.
• Causes: the Khilafat issue (led by the Ali brothers and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad) and the Punjab wrongs.
• Launch: from 31 August 1920; Calcutta special session (September 1920) and Nagpur session (1920), which set up linguistic PCCs and a four-anna membership.
• Impact: national schools, lawyers quitting, boycott of the Prince of Wales (1921), Chirala-Perala no-tax, leaders in Tamil Nadu were Rajaji, Satyamurthi and Periyar; Rampa revolt under Alluri Sitarama Raju and the Malabar rising.
• Withdrawal: Chauri Chaura, 5 February 1922, 22 policemen killed; ratified at Bardoli. Gandhi was sentenced to 6 years.

Swarajists, Left and revolutionaries

• C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru (pro-changers) formed the Swarajya party and won 42 of 101 Central Assembly seats; Satyamurti joined them. No-changers: Rajagopalachari, Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad.
• Gandhi fasted 21 days against communal riots.
• Left: S.A. Dange, M.N. Roy, Muzaffar Ahmed, Singaravelu; Kanpur, Meerut and Kakori conspiracy cases. Bhagat Singh and Batukeswar Dutt threw a bomb in the Central Assembly on 8 April 1929.

Simon Commission to Salt Satyagraha

• The all-white Simon Commission was boycotted (Madras Congress, 1927); "Simon Go Back"; Motilal Nehru Report rejected at the All-Parties meet, Calcutta, December 1928.
• Lahore session: Purna Swaraj; flag hoisted 31 December 1929; 26 January to be Independence Day.
• Dandi March: 375 km from Sabarmati with 78 followers, reached Dandi on 6 April 1930.
• Vedaranyam: Rajaji marched from Tiruchirappalli, 13 to 28 April 1930, despite collector J.A. Thorne's warning.

Round Table Conferences and Ambedkar

• Gandhi-Irwin pact, 5 March 1931; Gandhi the sole Congress representative at the Second RTC; movement suspended May 1933, withdrawn May 1934.
• Ambedkar: Mahar caste; Elphinstone College (1912), Columbia University; paper on Castes in India (1916); journal Mook Nayak; Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha; Mahad Satyagraha for tanks and wells.
• Communal Award (August 1932) by Ramsay MacDonald gave separate electorates; Gandhi's fast in Yervada jail; Poona Pact replaced them with reserved seats.
• Ambedkar founded the Independent Labour Party (1937) and the Scheduled Caste Federation (1942) and chaired the Drafting Committee of the Constitution.