Gandhi in India
India before 1915
• Prior to the British, India was ruled by the Mughal Emperors, who
did so through agreements with local rulers.
• Europeans arrived to trade from 1498 onwards, but it was only in
the 17th Century that the East India Company began its
involvement.
• As the Mughal Empire collapsed the Company stepped in to
protect its interests, and by 1850 they controlled almost all the
subcontinent.
• The brutal way in which they ruled led to the 1857 rebellion
which, although eventually put down, spelled an end to Company
rule.
• The British government took direct control and introduced a
number of reforms to prevent a rebellion on that scale ever
occurring again.
The Indian nationalist
movement
• The Indian National Congress, founded in 1885, convened annually
to discuss the issues facing India. They sent the resolutions they
passed to the regime, which tended to ignore them.
• The Congress was overwhelmingly Hindu, and almost all its
delegates were western-educated elites.
• Other religious groups were worried that an independent India, or
even a more autonomous India would lead to the Hindu majority
oppressing them.
• Before the First World War the Congress split between radicals, who
wanted immediate independence for India, and moderates, who
wanted reform within the existing structure.
• There were some small terrorist groups, but their impact was
minimal – although the British could use them as a pretext for
supressing other nationalists.
Gandhi’s goals and principles
• Gandhi sought swaraj, a word many took to mean political
independence for India, but had many more aspects for
Gandhi.
• Swaraj for him was a spiritual concept including freedom from
ignorance, self-control and a better society.
• Gandhi, throughout his time in India, did not seek only to win
concessions and ultimately independence from the British, but
to combat what he saw as social ills: illiteracy, poor hygiene,
animosity between Hindus and Muslims, child marriage,
discrimination against the lower castes etc.
Gandhi’s return to India
• Gandhi returned to India relatively well-known in nationalist
circles due to his achievements in South Africa
• He made a vow of a year’s silence on political matters and
spent most of it travelling the country
• Gandhi made a point of associating with Muslims and Hindus
from the lowest classes as he sought to break down social
barriers
• Gandhi founded an ashram where inmates lived lives of
manual labour, celibacy and nonviolence, and used only Indian
products
• Gandhi, in contrast to members of the Congress, advocated a
non-western style of education in the vernacular language and
with a more traditional curriculum.
Champaran Satyagraha 1917
• The Champaran region of the Bihar and Orissa province was a
very rural area, overwhelmingly reliant on agriculture.
• Most of the population were illiterate (95%+), and the area
was largely isolated from the nationalist movement.
• Gandhi was asked to travel there to investigate the grievances
of workers on indigo plantations in December 1916.
• The European indigo planters used their powers to raise illegal
levies from their tenants, deny them grazing and tree-felling
rights, and covered their losses by asking for extra rent in the
place of indigo when the international price of the commodity
fell.
• Gandhi led a series of protests and strikes, obtaining a
compromise agreement which was overseen by the
government and incorporated into law.
Kaira Satyagraha 1918
• The Gujurat district of Kaira in the Northern Division of the
Bombay presidency suffered bad harvests in 1917 and 1918,
and was also hit by sickness and cholera.
• Gandhi led a satyagraha in which the farmers refused to pay
their taxes, and responded to coercion non-violently.
• Gandhi travelled the region encouraging the protestors and
also sought to raise publicity in the rest of the nation for their
struggle.
• A compromise agreement was eventually reached protecting
the farmers from the worst consequences of non-payment of
tax.
• As in Champaran, it spread the idea of political protest to
another region of India.
Ahmedabad Satyagraha 1918
• Gandhi also led a similar movement in Ahmedabad, Indias 8th
largest city.
• Ahmedabad was a hotbed of industry, and rising prices,
combined with lock-outs and the loss of a plague bonus
meant mill-workers were also unable to meet the cost of
living.
• Gandhi organised a strike until the demand for a 35% pay
increase was met, and used leaflets to encourage and educate
the strikers.
• Gandhi eventually launched a personal hunger-strike, which
brought the employers to the negotiation table.
• Eventually the 35% pay increase was achieved.
Rowlatt Act 1919
• The Act extended wartime measures from the Defence of
India Act including juryless trials, indefinite detention without
charge and strict control of the press.
• Many nationalists found this completely unacceptable and
Gandhi decided to organise another satyagraha, this time on a
nationwide scale.
• On the 6th April they held a hartal – or day of mourning –
where people stopped work and went to meetings. Gandhi
then planned to openly sell prohibited books.
• In some regions, like the Punjab, some protests descended
into violence.
• Government repression was brutal, most infamously in
Amritsar, where at least 379 people were killed.
Khilafat Movement
• A movement among Indian Muslims aimed at pressuring the
British into protecting the Ottoman Sultan, who as Caliph was
head of the Islamic world, following the First World War.
• Gandhi agreed to champion the movement, something which
won him much Muslim support, which was a great help in his
non-cooperation campaign of the early twenties.
• A growth in communalism and the eventual collapse of the
Khilafat Movement led to more Hindu-Muslim animosity from
the mid-twenties onwards.
Non-cooperation
• Gandhi was handed leadership of Congress in 1921 and he
changed it from a debating society into an instrument for noncooperation.
• The 1922 campaign envisaged: boycotts of courts and schools,
resignations from Indian civil servants, boycott of foreign
cloth, the adoption of hand-spinning
• Small, tightly controlled acts of civil-disobedience also planned
• The boycott of foreign cloth was a success, but the other
elements less so. Nevertheless it marked the first major mass
mobilisation of people for independence.
• There were outbreaks of violence once more, showing the
limits to which Gandhi was able to control the actions of
people who were seen as his followers.
Gandhi’s arrest and
imprisonment
• Following the massacre of 22 police constables Gandhi called
off non-cooperation in February 1922.
• Soon after he was arrested and sent to prison. He was
released in February 1924
• Both Gandhi and Congress switched their focus away from
campaigns of non-cooperation.
• Congress sought to gain independence through constitutional
means, and Gandhi returned to his so-called ‘constructive
work’.
The Nehru Report
• In 1927 the commission reviewing the results of reforms in
India in order to determine if she ought to be granted more
autonomy failed to include a single Indian.
• In response some delegates of the Congress drew up the
Nehru Report, a draft constitution for India as an autonomous
dominion within the Empire.
• Gandhi brokered a deal between moderates and radicals
which involved giving the British until the end of 1929 to
accept the Nehru Report or launching a nonviolent campaign
for full independence
The Salt Satyagraha
• The British did not respond, and so Gandhi launched his salt
satyagraha.
• The salt tax was chosen as the focus of civil-disobedience
because it was clearly unjust, but also because it didn’t
threaten the raj so much as to illicit an overly brutal response.
• The centre-piece of the campaign was Gandhi’s three-week
salt march to Dandi, on the coast, to make his own salt. He
was accompanied by 12,000 people.
• Salt-making took place nationwide, especially in coastal
Bengal, Madras and Mumbai.
• The authorities eventually resorted to violence.
• In 1931 the Delhi Pact marked the end of the campaign
WWII, ‘Quit India’ and
independence
• In the mid thirties Gandhi returned to his constructive work
and Congress returned to the pursuit of independence by
constitutional means.
• The declaration of war on Germany without consultation of
Indian opinion saw Congress move once again into open
opposition to the government.
• The ‘Quit India’ campaign led to a violent rebellion with 1,000
killed and 100,000 people arrested.
• India and Pakistan were granted independence in 1947,
though Gandhi was bitterly disappointed that they hadn’t
remained united.
• In 1948 he was assassinated by a Hindu communalist.