THE UNREADEN TALES OF HISTORY

NATIONALISM IN INDIA [PART-1]

As you have seen, modern nationalism in Europe came to be

associated with the formation of nation-states. It also meant a change

in people’s understanding of who they were, and what defined their

identity and sense of belonging. New symbols and icons, new songs

and ideas forged new links and redefined the boundaries of

communities. In most countries the making of this new national

identity was a long process. How did this consciousness emerge

in India?

In India, as in Vietnam and many other colonies, 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

colonialism provided a shared bond that tied many different groups

together. But each class and group felt the effects of colonialism

differently, their experiences were varied, and their notions of

freedom were not always the same. The Congress under Mahatma

Gandhi tried to forge these groups together within one movement.

But the unity did not emerge without conflict.

In an earlier textbook you have read about the growth of nationalism

in India up to the first decade of the twentieth century. In this chapter

we will pick up the story from the 1920s and study the Non-

Cooperation and Civil Disobedience Movements. We will explore

how the Congress sought to develop the national movement, how

different social groups participated in the movement, and how

nationalism captured the imagination of people.

•The First World War, Khilafat and Non-Cooperation

In the years after 1919, we see the national movement spreading to

new areas, incorporating new social groups, and developing new

modes of struggle. How do we understand these developments?

What implications did they have?

First of all, the war created a new economic and political situation.

It led to a huge increase in defence expenditure which was financed

by war loans and increasing taxes: customs duties were raised and

income tax introduced. Through the war years prices increased –

doubling between 1913 and 1918 – 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.

Then 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.

People hoped that their hardships would end after the war was

over. But that did not happen.

At this stage a new leader appeared and suggested a new mode

of struggle.

→The Idea of Satyagraha

Mahatma Gandhi returned to India in January 1915. As you know,

he had come 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 emphasised 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. Without seeking vengeance or

being aggressive, a satyagrahi could win the battle through non-

violence. This could be done 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 truth through the

use of violence. By this struggle, truth was bound to ultimately

triumph. Mahatma Gandhi believed that this dharma of non-violence

could unite all Indians.

After arriving in India, Mahatma Gandhi successfully organised

satyagraha movements in various places. In 1916 he travelled to

Champaran in Bihar to inspire the peasants to struggle against the

oppressive plantation system.Then in 1917, he organised a satyagraha

to support the peasants of the Kheda district of Gujarat. Affected

by crop failure and a plague epidemic, the peasants of Kheda could

not pay the revenue, and were demanding that revenue collection be

relaxed. In 1918, Mahatma Gandhi went to Ahmedabad to organise

a satyagraha movement amongst cotton mill workers.

→The Rowlatt Act

Emboldened with this success, Gandhiji in 1919 decided to launch a

nationwide satyagraha against the proposed Rowlatt Act (1919). 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 detention of political prisoners without trial for two

years. Mahatma Gandhi wanted non-violent civil disobedience against

such unjust laws, which would start with a hartal on 6 April.

Rallies were organised in various cities, workers went on strike in

railway workshops, and shops closed down. Alarmed by the popular

upsurge, and scared that lines of communication such as the railways

and telegraph would be disrupted, the British administration decided

to clamp down on nationalists. Local leaders were picked up from

Amritsar, and Mahatma Gandhi was barred from entering Delhi.

On 10 April, the police in Amritsar fired upon a peaceful procession,

provoking widespread attacks on banks, post offices and railway

stations. Martial law was imposed and General Dyer took command. On 13 April the infamous Jallianwalla Bagh incident took place. On

that day a crowd of villagers who had come to Amritsar to attend

a fair gathered in the enclosed ground of Jallianwalla Bagh. Being

from outside the city, they were unaware of the martial law that had

been imposed. 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.

As the news of Jallianwalla Bagh spread, crowds took to the streets

in many north Indian towns. There were strikes, clashes with the

police and attacks on government buildings. The government

responded with brutal repression, seeking to humiliate and terrorise

people: satyagrahis were forced to rub their noses on the ground,

crawl on the streets, and do salaam (salute) to all sahibs; people were

flogged and villages (around Gujranwala in Punjab, now in Pakistan)

were bombed. Seeing violence spread, Mahatma Gandhi called off

the movement.

While the Rowlatt satyagraha had been a widespread movement, it

was still limited mostly to cities and towns. Mahatma Gandhi now

felt the need to launch a more broad-based movement in India.

But he was certain that no such movement could be organised without

bringing the Hindus and Muslims closer together. One way of doing

this, he felt, was to take up the Khilafat issue. The First World War

had ended with the defeat of Ottoman Turkey. And there were

rumours 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. A young

generation of Muslim leaders like the brothers Muhammad Ali

and Shaukat Ali, began discussing with Mahatma Gandhi about

the possibility of a united mass action on the issue. Gandhiji saw this

as an opportunity to bring Muslims under the umbrella of a unified

national movement. At the Calcutta session of the Congress in

September 1920, he convinced other leaders of the need to start

a non-cooperation movement in support of Khilafat as well as

for swaraj.

→Why Non-cooperation?

In his famous book Hind Swaraj (1909) Mahatma Gandhi declared

that British rule was established in India with the cooperation of Indians, and had survived only because of this cooperation. If Indians

refused to cooperate, British rule in India would collapse within a

year, and swaraj would come.

How could non-cooperation become a movement? Gandhiji

proposed that the movement should unfold in stages. It should begin

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.

Through the summer of 1920 Mahatma Gandhi and Shaukat Ali

toured extensively, mobilising popular support for the movement.

Many within the Congress were, however, concerned about the

proposals. They were reluctant to boycott the council elections

scheduled for November 1920, and they feared that the movement

might lead to popular violence. In the months between September

and December there was an intense tussle within the Congress. For a

while there seemed no meeting point between the supporters and

the opponents of the movement. Finally, at the Congress session at

Nagpur in December 1920, a compromise was worked out and

the Non-Cooperation programme was adopted.

How did the movement unfold? Who participated in it? How did

different social groups conceive of the idea of Non-Cooperation?

•Differing Strands within the Movement

The Non-Cooperation-Khilafat Movement began in January 1921.

Various social groups participated in this 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.

→The Movement 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. The council elections were boycotted in most

provinces except Madras, where the Justice Party, the party of the

non-Brahmans, felt that entering the council was one way of gaining

some power – something that usually only Brahmans had access to.

The effects of non-cooperation on the economic front were more

dramatic. Foreign goods were boycotted, liquor shops picketed,

and foreign cloth burnt in huge bonfires. The import of foreign

cloth halved between 1921 and 1922, its value dropping from

Rs 102 crore to Rs 57 crore. In many places merchants and traders

refused to trade in foreign goods or finance foreign trade. As the

boycott movement spread, and people began discarding imported

clothes and wearing only Indian ones, production of Indian textile

mills and handlooms went up.

But this movement in the cities gradually slowed down for a variety

of reasons. Khadi cloth was often more expensive than mass-

produced mill cloth and poor people could not afford to buy it.

How then could they boycott mill cloth for too long? Similarly the

boycott of British institutions posed a problem. For the movement

to be successful, alternative Indian institutions had to be set up

so that they could be used in place of the British ones. These were

slow to come up. So students and teachers began trickling

back to government schools and lawyers joined back work in

government courts.