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Source Source A Read the text carefully. What did Mahatma Gandhi mean when he said satyagraha is active resistance? Source Source B In , Vallabhbhai Patel led the peasant movement in Bardoli, a taluka in Gujarat, against enhancement of land revenue. Known as the Bardoli Satyagraha, this movement was a success under the able leadership of Vallabhbhai Patel.

The struggle was widely publicised and generated immense sympathy in many parts of India. Tribal peasants interpreted the message of Mahatma Gandhi and the idea of swaraj in yet another way. In the Gudem Hills of Andhra Pradesh, for instance, a militant guerrilla movement spread in the early 1920s – not a form of struggle that the Congress could approve. Here, as in other forest regions, 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. Not only were their livelihoods affected but they felt that their traditional rights were being denied. When the government began forcing them to contribute begar for road building, the hill people revolted. The person who came to lead them was an interesting figure.

Alluri Sitaram Raju claimed that he had a variety of special powers: he could make correct astrological predictions and heal people, and he could survive even bullet shots. Captivated by Raju, the rebels proclaimed that he was an incarnation of God. Raju talked of the greatness of Mahatma Gandhi, said he was inspired by the Non-Cooperation Movement, and persuaded people to wear khadi and give up drinking. But at the same time he asserted that India could be liberated only by the use of force, not non-violence.

The Gudem rebels attacked police stations, attempted to kill British officials and carried on guerrilla warfare for achieving swaraj. Raju was captured and executed in , and over time became a folk hero. . Swaraj in the Plantations Workers too had their own understanding of Mahatma Gandhi and the notion of swaraj.

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. Under the Inland Emigration Act of , plantation workers were not permitted to leave the tea gardens without permission, and in fact they were rarely given such permission. When they heard of the Non-Cooperation Movement, thousands of workers defied the authorities, left the plantations and headed home. They believed that Gandhi Raj was coming and everyone would be given land in their own villages.

They, however, never reached their destination. Stranded on the way by a railway and steamer strike, they were caught by the police and brutally beaten up. Find out about other participants in the National Movement who were captured and put to death by the British. Can you think of a similar example from the national movement in Indo-China (Chapter )?

Source with the British, as they had done in - , but also to break colonial laws. Thousands in different parts of the country broke the salt law, manufactured salt and demonstrated in front of government salt factories. As the movement spread, foreign cloth was boycotted, and liquor shops were picketed. Peasants refused to pay revenue and chaukidari taxes, village officials resigned, and in many places forest people violated forest laws – going into Reserved Forests to collect wood and graze cattle.

Worried by the developments, the colonial government began arresting the Congress leaders one by one. This led to violent clashes in many palaces. When Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a devout disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, was arrested in April , angry crowds demonstrated in the streets of Peshawar, facing armoured cars and police firing. Many were killed.

A month later, when Mahatma Gandhi himself was arrested, industrial workers in Sholapur attacked police posts, municipal buildings, lawcourts and railway stations – all structures that symbolised British rule. A frightened government responded with a policy of brutal repression. Peaceful satyagrahis were attacked, women and children were beaten, and about , people were arrested. In such a situation, Mahatma Gandhi once again decided to call off the movement and entered into a pact with Irwin on March .

By this Gandhi-Irwin Pact, Gandhiji consented to participate in a Round Table Conference (the Congress had boycotted the first Fig. – The Dandi march. During the salt march Mahatma Gandhi was accompanied by volunteers. On the way they were joined by thousands.

Fig. – Police cracked down on satyagrahis, . Round Table Conference) in London and the government agreed to release the political prisoners. In December , Gandhiji went to London for the conference, but the negotiations broke down and he returned disappointed.

Back in India, he discovered that the government had begun a new cycle of repression. Ghaffar Khan and Jawaharlal Nehru were both in jail, the Congress had been declared illegal, and a series of measures had been imposed to prevent meetings, demonstrations and boycotts. With great apprehension, Mahatma Gandhi relaunched the Civil Disobedience Movement. For over a year, the movement continued, but by it lost its momentum.

. How Participants saw the Movement Let us now look at the different social groups that participated in the Civil Disobedience Movement. Why did they join the movement? What were their ideals?

What did swaraj mean to them? In the countryside, rich peasant communities – like the Patidars of Gujarat and the Jats of Uttar Pradesh – were active in the movement. Being producers of commercial crops, they were very hard hit by the trade depression and falling prices. As their cash income disappeared, they found it impossible to pay the government’s revenue demand.

And the refusal of the government to reduce the revenue demand led to widespread resentment. These rich peasants became enthusiastic supporters of the Civil Disobedience Movement, organising their communities, and at times forcing reluctant members, to participate in the boycott programmes. For them the fight for swaraj was a struggle against high revenues. But they were deeply disappointed when the movement was called off in without the revenue rates being revised.

So when the movement was restarted in , many of them refused to participate. The poorer peasantry were not just interested in the lowering of the revenue demand. Many of them were small tenants cultivating land they had rented from landlords. As the Depression continued and cash incomes dwindled, the small tenants found it difficult to pay their rent.

They wanted the unpaid rent to the landlord to be remitted. They joined a variety of radical movements, often led by Socialists and Communists. Apprehensive of raising issues that might upset the rich peasants and landlords, the Congress was unwilling to support ‘no rent’ campaigns in most places. So the relationship between the poor peasants and the Congress remained uncertain.

‘To the altar of this revolution we have brought our youth as incense’ Many nationalists thought that the struggle against the British could not be won through non-violence. In , the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA) was founded at a meeting in Ferozeshah Kotla ground in Delhi. Amongst its leaders were Bhagat Singh, Jatin Das and Ajoy Ghosh. In a series of dramatic actions in different parts of India, the HSRA targeted some of the symbols of British power.

In April , Bhagat Singh and Batukeswar Dutta threw a bomb in the Legislative Assembly. In the same year there was an attempt to blow up the train that Lord Irwin was travelling in. Bhagat Singh was when he was tried and executed by the colonial government. During his trial, Bhagat Singh stated that he did not wish to glorify ‘the cult of the bomb and pistol’ but wanted a revolution in society: ‘Revolution is the inalienable right of mankind.

Freedom is the imprescriptible birthright of all. The labourer is the real sustainer of society … To the altar of this revolution we have brought our youth as incense, for no sacrifice is too great for so magnificent a cause. We are content. We await the advent of revolution.

Inquilab Zindabad!’ Box What about the business classes? How did they relate to the Civil Disobedience Movement? During the First World War, Indian merchants and industrialists had made huge profits and become powerful (see Chapter ). Keen on expanding their business, they now reacted against colonial policies that restricted business activities.

They wanted protection against imports of foreign goods, and a rupee-sterling foreign exchange ratio that would discourage imports. To organise business interests, they formed the Indian Industrial and Commercial Congress in and the Federation of the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FICCI) in . Led by prominent industrialists like Purshottamdas Thakurdas and G. D.

Birla, the industrialists attacked colonial control over the Indian economy, and supported the Civil Disobedience Movement when it was first launched. They gave financial assistance and refused to buy or sell imported goods. Most businessmen came to see swaraj as a time when colonial restrictions on business would no longer exist and trade and industry would flourish without constraints. But after the failure of the Round Table Conference, business groups were no longer uniformly enthusiastic.

They were apprehensive of the spread of militant activities, and worried about prolonged disruption of business, as well as of the growing influence of socialism amongst the younger members of the Congress. The industrial working classes did not participate in the Civil Disobedience Movement in large numbers, except in the Nagpur region. As the industrialists came closer to the Congress, workers stayed aloof. But in spite of that, some workers did participate in the Civil Disobedience Movement, selectively adopting some of the ideas of the Gandhian programme, like boycott of foreign goods, as part of their own movements against low wages and poor working conditions.

There were strikes by railway workers in and dockworkers in . In thousands of workers in Chotanagpur tin mines wore Gandhi caps and participated in protest rallies and boycott campaigns. But the Congress was reluctant to include workers’ demands as part of its programme of struggle. It felt that this would alienate industrialists and divide the anti- imperial forces.

Another important feature of the Civil Disobedience Movement was the large-scale participation of women. During Gandhiji’s salt march, thousands of women came out of their homes to listen to him. They participated in protest marches, manufactured salt, and Some important dates - Distressed UP peasants organised by Baba Ramchandra. April Gandhian hartal against Rowlatt Act; Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

January Non-Cooperation and Khilafat movement launched. February Chauri Chaura; Gandhiji withdraws Non- Cooperation movement. May Alluri Sitarama Raju arrested ending a two-year armed tribal struggle. December Lahore Congress; Congress adopts the demand for ‘Purna Swaraj’.

Ambedkar establishes Depressed Classes Association. March Gandhiji begins Civil Disobedience Movement by breaking salt law at Dandi. March Gandhiji ends Civil Disobedience Movement. December Second Round Table Conference.

Civil Disobedience re-launched. picketed foreign cloth and liquor shops. Many went to jail. In urban areas these women were from high-caste families; in rural areas they came from rich peasant households.

Moved by Gandhiji’s call, they began to see service to the nation as a sacred duty of women. Yet, this increased public role did not necessarily mean any radical change in the way the position of women was visualised. Gandhiji was convinced that it was the duty of women to look after home and hearth, be good mothers and good wives. And for a long time the Congress was reluctant to allow women to hold any position of authority within the organisation.

It was keen only on their symbolic presence. . The Limits of Civil Disobedience 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. He called the ‘untouchables’ harijan, Why did various classes and groups of Indians participate in the Civil Disobedience Movement? Source Read the Source D carefully.

Do you agree with Iqbal’s idea of communalism? Can you define communalism in a different way? Source revival. In Madras, Natesa Sastri published a massive four-volume collection of Tamil folk tales, The Folklore of Southern India .

He believed that folklore was national literature; it was ‘the most trustworthy manifestation of people’s real thoughts and characteristics’. As the national movement developed, nationalist leaders became more and more aware of such icons and symbols in unifying people and inspiring in them a feeling of nationalism. During the Swadeshi movement in Bengal, a tricolour flag (red, green and yellow) was designed. It had eight lotuses representing eight provinces of British India, and a crescent moon, representing Hindus and Muslims.

By , Gandhiji had designed the Swaraj flag. It was again a tricolour (red, green and white) and had a spinning wheel in the centre, representing the Gandhian ideal of self-help. Carrying the flag, holding it aloft, during marches became a symbol of defiance. Another means of creating a feeling of nationalism was through reinterpretation of history.

By the end of the nineteenth century many Indians began feeling that to instill a sense of pride in the nation, Indian history had to be thought about differently. The British saw Indians as backward and primitive, incapable of governing themselves. In response, Indians began looking into the past to discover India’s great achievements. They wrote about the glorious developments in ancient times when art and architecture, science and mathematics, religion and culture, law and philosophy, crafts and trade had flourished.

This glorious time, in their view, was followed by a history of decline, when India was colonised. These nationalist histories urged the readers to take pride in India’s great achievements in the past and struggle to change the miserable conditions of life under British rule. These efforts to unify people were not without problems. When the past being glorified was Hindu, when the images celebrated were drawn from Hindu iconography, then people of other communities felt left out.

Fig. 14a – Bharat Mata. This figure of Bharat Mata is a contrast to the one painted by Abanindranath Tagore. Here she is shown with a trishul , standing beside a lion and an elephant – both symbols of power and authority.

Look at Figs. and . Do you think these images will appeal to all castes and communities? Explain your views briefly.