Chapter 2: Nationalism in India (History)

(a) In the colonies, people began to discover their unity in the process of their struggle against colonial rule. The sense of being oppressed by a common foreign power provided a shared bond that tied different groups together. Each class and group felt the effects of colonialism differently, but the anti-colonial movement brought them together and gave them a common identity as a nation. So modern nationalism in colonies such as India grew together with the anti-colonial movement.

(b) The war created a new economic and political situation:

• It led to a huge increase in defence expenditure, financed by war loans and increased taxes: customs duties were raised and income tax introduced.
• Prices doubled between 1913 and 1918, causing extreme hardship for the common people.
• Villagers were called upon to supply soldiers, and forced recruitment in rural areas caused widespread anger.
• Crops failed in many parts of India in 1918–19 and 1920–21, causing acute food shortages, and an influenza epidemic killed 12 to 13 million people.

People hoped their hardships would end after the war, but that did not happen. This anger made people join the national movement, and at this stage a new leader, Mahatma Gandhi, appeared with a new mode of struggle.

(c) The Rowlatt Act (1919) was hurriedly passed by 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. Indians felt it was unjust and a denial of their civil rights, so Gandhiji launched a nationwide satyagraha against it.

(d) In February 1922, at Chauri Chaura in Gorakhpur, a peaceful demonstration in a bazaar turned into a violent clash with the police, and the mob set fire to a police station, killing several policemen. Gandhiji felt that the movement was turning violent in many places and that satyagrahis needed to be properly trained before they would be ready for mass struggles. So he withdrew the Non-Cooperation Movement.

(a) People discovered their unity in the common struggle against colonial rule. (b) War taxes, rising prices, forced recruitment, famine and epidemic created anger that fed the movement. (c) It allowed detention without trial for two years. (d) The movement turned violent, as at Chauri Chaura.

Satyagraha was a novel method of mass agitation introduced by Mahatma Gandhi.

• It emphasised the power of truth and the need to search for truth.
• If the cause was true and the struggle was against injustice, physical force was not necessary to fight the oppressor.
• Without seeking vengeance or being aggressive, a satyagrahi could win the battle through non-violence, by appealing to the conscience of the oppressor.
• People, including the oppressors, had to be persuaded to see the truth instead of being forced to accept it. Gandhiji believed that this dharma of non-violence could unite all Indians.

He used it successfully in Champaran (1917, against the oppressive plantation system), Kheda (1917, for peasants who could not pay revenue) and Ahmedabad (1918, for cotton mill workers).

Satyagraha is a non-violent method of struggle based on the power of truth: fighting injustice without violence or revenge, by appealing to the conscience of the oppressor.

(a) HUNDREDS KILLED IN AMRITSAR: GENERAL DYER ORDERS FIRING ON UNARMED CROWD

Amritsar, 13 April 1919. On the day of the Baisakhi fair, a large crowd gathered in the enclosed ground of Jallianwala Bagh. Some had come to protest against the government's new repressive measures (the Rowlatt Act and the arrest of local leaders), while many villagers had come for the fair, unaware that martial law had been imposed. General Dyer entered the area with his troops, blocked the only exit points and opened fire on the crowd without warning. Hundreds were killed and many more wounded. The general has stated that his object was to "produce a moral effect" and to create a feeling of terror in the minds of satyagrahis. As news spreads, crowds are taking to the streets in many north Indian towns, and there are strikes and clashes with the police.

(b) "SIMON GO BACK": ALL-WHITE COMMISSION MEETS BLACK FLAGS

Bombay, 3 February 1928. The Statutory Commission under Sir John Simon, set up by the new Tory government in Britain to look into the working of the constitutional system in India and suggest changes, arrived in India today. The commission does not have a single Indian member: all its members are British. It was greeted with the slogan "Go back, Simon". All parties, including the Congress and the Muslim League, took part in the demonstrations. To win them over, the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, announced in October 1929 a vague offer of "dominion status" for India at an unspecified future and a Round Table Conference to discuss a future constitution, but this did not satisfy the Congress leaders.

See the two reports above.

Similarities: both are female allegories of the nation. Both were created to give the abstract idea of the nation a concrete form that people could identify with, and both became powerful symbols that inspired nationalist feeling.

Differences:

• Bharat Mata (Abanindranath Tagore, 1905) is shown as an ascetic, calm, composed and spiritual figure, a divine mother, holding a book, sheaves of paddy, a piece of white cloth and a garland, i.e. learning, food and clothing. In later images she appears with a trishul, beside a lion and an elephant: symbols of power and authority. The image was linked to Hindu religious tradition and to the idea of devotion to the motherland.
• Germania is shown as a warrior woman, wearing a crown of oak leaves (heroism), holding a sword and with a shield. Her image stood for military strength, readiness to fight, and the political unity of the German nation, not for spirituality.

Both are female symbols of the nation; Bharat Mata is calm, spiritual and motherly (with learning, food and clothing), while Germania is a warrior figure symbolising heroism and military strength.

Groups: the middle classes in the towns (students, teachers, headmasters, lawyers), merchants and traders, peasants, tribal people, and plantation workers.

• Middle classes in the towns: thousands of students left government schools and colleges, headmasters and teachers resigned, and lawyers gave up their practices. Council elections were boycotted in most provinces (except Madras). Foreign goods were boycotted, liquor shops picketed and foreign cloth burnt in huge bonfires. They hoped for swaraj and the end of British domination, and believed that swadeshi would revive Indian industries.
• Peasants in Awadh: led by Baba Ramchandra, a sanyasi, the peasants struggled against talukdars and landlords who demanded very high rents and many other cesses, and made them do begar (forced labour). The movement demanded the reduction of revenue, the abolition of begar and a social boycott of oppressive landlords. The Oudh Kisan Sabha was set up in October 1920.
• Tribal peasants in the Gudem Hills (Andhra Pradesh): the colonial government had closed large forest areas, preventing them from entering the forests to graze cattle or collect fuelwood and fruit. This threatened their livelihoods and denied them their traditional rights. Led by Alluri Sitaram Raju, they began a militant guerrilla movement in the early 1920s.
• Plantation workers in Assam: under the Inland Emigration Act of 1859, they were not permitted to leave the tea gardens without permission. When they heard of the movement, thousands defied the authorities, left the plantations and headed home, believing that Gandhi Raj was coming and everyone would be given land in their own villages.

Middle classes, merchants, peasants, tribals and plantation workers joined, each with their own hopes: swaraj and swadeshi for the middle class, freedom from high rents and begar for Awadh peasants, forest rights for the Gudem tribals, and freedom to go home for Assam's plantation workers.

• On 31 January 1930, Gandhiji sent a letter to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, with eleven demands. The most stirring was the demand to abolish the salt tax.
• Salt was consumed by the rich and the poor alike; it was one of the most essential items of food. The tax on salt and the government monopoly over its production revealed the most oppressive face of British rule, which hurt everyone.
• When Irwin did not respond, Gandhiji started the Salt March with 78 trusted volunteers on 12 March 1930, from Sabarmati to the coastal town of Dandi, about 240 miles away, walking about 10 miles a day.
• Thousands came to hear him wherever he stopped, and he explained what swaraj meant and urged people to peacefully defy the British.
• On 6 April 1930, he reached Dandi and ceremonially violated the law by making salt from boiling sea water.

This marked the beginning of the Civil Disobedience Movement. Because salt touched every Indian, the march united all sections of society, was simple to join (anyone could make salt), and showed the injustice of British rule in a way everyone could understand. So it became a powerful symbol of resistance.

Salt was used by everyone, so the tax on it showed the unfairness of British rule to all; by marching to Dandi and making salt (1930), Gandhiji turned a simple act into a symbol that united the whole nation against colonialism.

A personal account:

When Gandhiji walked to Dandi, I went with the women of my village to hear him speak. For the first time in my life I stepped out of my home for something bigger than my family. I joined the protest marches, manufactured salt on the beach, and stood with other women picketing shops that sold foreign cloth and liquor. Some of us were arrested and went to jail.

The experience changed me. I felt that serving the nation was a sacred duty of women, just as much as of men. I learnt to speak in public, to face the police without fear, and to work alongside people from different backgrounds. I realised that my opinion mattered. Even though Gandhiji still thought women's main duty was to look after home and family, and few women were given positions of leadership in the Congress, the movement gave us a new identity and confidence. It showed that women could be active participants in public life and in the struggle for freedom.

It brought women out of their homes into public life, as protesters, salt-makers and picketers, giving them a sense of national duty, confidence and a new public identity.

• Dr B. R. Ambedkar, who organised the dalits into the Depressed Classes Association in 1930, demanded separate electorates for dalits. He believed that political empowerment would resolve their social disabilities, and that only representatives elected by dalits themselves could truly protect their interests. He clashed with Gandhiji over this at the Second Round Table Conference.
• When the British government conceded his demand, Gandhiji began a fast unto death. He believed that separate electorates for dalits would slow down their integration into society and divide the Hindu community. The dispute ended with the Poona Pact of September 1932, which gave the depressed classes reserved seats in provincial and central legislative councils, but to be voted in by the general electorate.
• Some Muslim leaders, such as Muhammad Ali Jinnah, also demanded separate electorates or reserved seats for Muslims, fearing that the minority's culture and identity would be submerged under the domination of a Hindu majority. At the All Parties Conference of 1928, M. R. Jayakar of the Hindu Mahasabha strongly opposed efforts at compromise.

So leaders differed because they had different ideas about how best to protect the interests of their communities and about national unity.

Ambedkar (for dalits) and some Muslim leaders saw separate electorates as necessary to protect minority interests, while Gandhiji and the Congress feared they would divide society; the dalit question was settled by the Poona Pact (1932).

Here is an outline for the project.

Indo-China (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia):

• It was a French colony from the late nineteenth century. The French built canals and drained lands for rice cultivation, introduced plantations, and used forced labour; French-style education created a Westernised elite.
• Resistance grew through movements led by scholars (e.g. Phan Boi Chau, Phan Chu Trinh), student movements, religious groups and, above all, the Communist Party founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1930.
• During the Second World War, Japan occupied Vietnam; the Vietminh (League for the Independence of Vietnam) fought the Japanese and declared independence in 1945.
• The French tried to regain control, but were defeated at Dien Bien Phu (1954). Vietnam was divided, and after a long war against the United States, it was reunified in 1975.

Comparison:

India won freedom mainly through non-violent mass movements and negotiation (1947), while Vietnam won it through armed struggle against France and the USA, completed in 1975.