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Nationalism in India
History Nationalism in India

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An Introduction of Nationalism in India

In 1919, nationalism was expanding into new

areas, and new social groups and modes of
struggle were emerging. In January 1915,
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi came back to
India, bringing with him the concept of
nonviolent mass agitation- Satyagraha, which
focused on the power of truth and the need
to search for it. Satyagraha imposed the
power of truth and encouraged people to
seek it. It implied that no physical force was
necessary for the struggle against injustice to
!ght the colonists.

Mahatma Gandhi had organized Satyagraha

on a mass level in various parts of India. In
1916, he went to Champaran, Bihar, to
encourage peasants to !ght the oppressive
plantation system. In 1917, the peasants of
the Kheda district demanded relaxation in
revenue collection due to a plague epidemic
and a crop failure. Gandhi organized
Satyagraha in Kheda, Gujarat, in support of
the peasants of that district. Similarly, in
1918, he organized another mass movement
of Satyagraha in Ahmedabad among the
cotton mill workers.

Here’s an introduction of nationalism in

India, where we will learn about the various
movements of struggle that had symbolized
nationalism in India and eventually led to the
independence movement of our country.
This article will help students to collect
relevant information for nationalism in India
project work as well.

The Rowlatt Act

The British government had proposed and
hurriedly passed the Rowlatt Act in 1919
through the Imperial Legislative Council
despite the opposition of the Indian
members. This Act gave the government vast
powers to suppress political activity and
allowed the prisoners to be detained without
trial for two years. Gandhi advocated for
nonviolent civil disobedience against such
unjust laws, beginning with a hartal on April
6, 1919.

Rallies were held in various cities, workers

went on strike in railway workshops, and
small, and big shops closed their doors. The
British administration decided to restrict the
nationalists in response to the popular
uprising, fearing that communication lines
such as the railways and telegraph would be
disrupted in this movement. Local leaders
were arrested from Amritsar, and Gandhi
was denied entry in Delhi.

On April 10, 1919, the police !red on a

peaceful procession in Amritsar, resulting in
widespread attacks on banks, railway
stations, and post o#ces. Martial law was
declared. General Dyer took over the charge.
On April 13, 1919, the Jallianwalla Bagh
massacre took place. A large crowd gathered
in Jallianwalla Bagh's enclosed ground to
attend the annual fair for Baisakhi. Some
people came to the ground to protest against
the new repressive measures of the British
government.

Many people came from other villages and

were not aware of the martial law being
imposed in the city. Dyer entered the ground,
shut down the exit, and opened !re on the
crowd, killing hundreds of innocent people.
As later stated, this massacre was aimed to
produce a moral e$ect and to instill fear and
awe in the minds of Satyagrahis.

Crowds took to the streets in several north

Indian towns as the news of the Jallianwalla
Bagh massacre spread. Strikes, attacks on
government buildings, and clashes with
police occurred. The government answered
with brutal repression to humiliate and
terrorize the people. The Satyagrahis were
forced to rub their noses on the ground,
crawl on the streets, and salute all Britishers.
People were %ogged, villages around
Gujranwala, now in Pakistan, were bombed.
As the violence escalated, Mahatma Gandhi
called the movement o$.

While the Rowlatt Satyagraha was a

widespread movement, it was still mostly
con!ned to cities and towns. Mahatma
Gandhi now felt compelled to launch a
broader-based movement in India. However,
he was certain that no such movement could
be organized unless Hindus and Muslims
worked together. He believed that taking up
the Khilafat issue was one way to accomplish
this. The Ottoman of Turkey was defeated at
the end of World War I.

There were rumours that the Ottoman

emperor, the Khalifa, the spiritual leader of
the Islamic world, would be subjected to a
harsh peace treaty. In March 1919, a Khilafat
Committee was formed in Bombay to defend
the Khalifa's temporal powers.

A new generation of Muslim leaders, such as

the brothers Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali,
began discussing the possibility of united
mass action on the issue with Mahatma
Gandhi. Gandhiji saw this as an opportunity
to unite Muslims under a uni!ed national
movement. In September 1920, at the
Congress session in Calcutta, he persuaded
other leaders of the importance of launching
a non-cooperation movement in support of
Khilafat and Swaraj.

Non-Cooperation Movement
Gandhiji advocated for a staged approach to
the non-cooperation movement. It should
start with the boycott of the civil services,
police, army, schools, courts and legislative
councils, foreign commodities, and the
surrender of titles bestowed by the British
government. If the government repressed
the people, a full-%edged civil disobedience
movement would have to be launched.
Mahatma Gandhi and Shaukat Ali toured the
country extensively in the summer of 1920,
mobilizing public support for the non-
cooperation movement.

Many members of Congress, however, were

concerned about the proposals. They were
hesitant to boycott the November 1920
council elections because they feared the
movement would spark popular violence.
Between September and December, there
was a heated debate within Congress. There
was a time when the opponents and the
supporters of the movement were nowhere
close to coming together. Finally, in
December 1920, at the Congress session held
at Nagpur, the Non-Cooperation program
was adopted.

Di$erent Strands of the Non-

Cooperation Movement
The non-cooperation movement started in
January 1921 with the active participation of
various social groups driven by their
aspirations. The term Swaraj had di$erent
signi!cance to di$erent social groups.

Non-Cooperation Movement in the

Towns and Cities
In the cities, the movement began with the
participation of middle-class people.
Thousands of students left government-run
schools and colleges, headmasters and
teachers resigned, and lawyers ceased
practicing. Most provinces boycotted the
council elections, excluding Madras, where
the Justice Party, a non-Brahman party, felt
that entering the council was one way to gain
power.

The economic consequences of non-

cooperation were quite dramatic. Liquor
shops were picketed, foreign goods were
boycotted, and foreign clothing was burned
in massive bon!res. The price of imported
foreign clothes was almost halved between
1921 and 1922. Merchants and traders in
many places refused to trade in foreign
goods or !nance foreign trade. As the
boycott movement began to spread, people
abandoned imported clothing and began to
wear indigenous clothes. Hence, the
production of Indian textile mills and
handlooms increased.

The Non-Cooperation movement slowed

down gradually in the cities. Khadi clothing
was more expensive than mass-produced
mill cloth. Hence the poor could not a$ord it.
The boycott of British institutions resulted in
a problem. To ensure the success of the
movement, alternative Indian institutions
had to be established that could be attended
instead of the British ones. As it took longer
for these institutions to be established,
students and teachers began to return to the
government schools, and lawyers returned to
work in government courts.

Non-Cooperation Movement in the

Countryside
In the countryside, the peasants and the
tribes participated in the movement. In
Awadh, the movement was against the
landlords and ‘talukdars’ who extorted
exorbitant land rents and other taxes from
the peasants. The peasants were forced to
‘begar’, that is, they had to work on the farms
of the landlords without any wages. They
were randomly evicted from the farmlands
so that they could not acquire any rights over
the land. They did not have any job security
on the leased lands.

The non-cooperation movement of the

peasants demanded revenue reduction,
begar abolition, and a social boycott of the
landlords. The panchayat organized nai dhobi
bandhs that would deprive the landlords of
the services of washermen and barbers. In
October 1920, Jawaharlal Nehru, Baba
Ramchandra, with some other people, had
set up the Oudh Kisan Sabha. Over 300
branches of the committee were established
in villages around that area. As a result, when
the Non-Cooperation Movement began the
following year, Congress's e$ort was to
integrate the Awadh peasant struggle into
the larger struggle.

The peasant movement, on the other hand,

took forms that the Congress leadership
despised. As the movement spread in 1921,
talukdars' and merchants' homes were
attacked, bazaars were looted, and grain
hoards were seized. Local leaders told
peasants in many places that Gandhi had
declared that no taxes would be paid and
that land would be redistributed among the
poor. The Mahatma's name was being
invoked to validate all actions and
aspirations.

Dandi March and the Civil

Disobedience Movement
Mahatma Gandhi saw salt as a powerful
symbol with the potential to unite the nation.
On January 31, 1930, he sent Viceroy Irwin a
letter outlining eleven demands. Some were
of general interest, while others were speci!c
demands of various classes, ranging from
industrialists to peasants. The idea was to
broaden the demands so that all classes
within Indian society could identify with
them and join forces in a united campaign.
The most stirring demand was to repeal the
salt tax. Salt was something that was
consumed by both the rich and the poor, and
it was one of the most important food items.
Gandhi revealed the most repressive face of
the British government by putting light on
the salt tax, the government’s monopoly on
salt production in India.

Gandhi’s letter to Irwin was an ultimatum.

According to the letter, Congress would be
launching a civil disobedience movement if
the government did not ful!ll its demands by
March 11. Irwin was adamantly opposed to
bargaining. As a result, Mahatma Gandhi
began the salt march, along with 78 of his
trusted volunteers. From his ashram in
Sabarmati to Dandi, the coastal town in
Gujarat, they walked more than 240 miles.
They walked for 24 days, covering
approximately 10 miles per day. Thousands
of commoners gathered to hear Mahatma
Gandhi wherever he went, and he explained
what he meant by Swaraj and urged them to
defy the British peacefully. On April 6, they
arrived at Dandi and made salt by boiling the
seawater. This event marked the start of the
Civil Disobedience Movement.

The common people were asked to break the

colonial laws imposed by the British
government in addition to non-cooperating
with them. Salt was manufactured by the
commoners in front of the salt factories in
many parts of India to break the salt law.
Foreign clothing was boycotted, peasants
refused to pay taxes, liquor shops were
picketed in towns, the o#cials in villages
resigned from their o#ces. In certain parts of
the country, the Forest laws were broken,
people went into the Reserved Forests for
cattle grazing and collected wood.

Concerned about the situation, the colonial

government began arresting Congress
leaders. This resulted in violent clashes in a
number of places. When Abdul Gha$ar Khan,
a follower of Mahatma Gandhi, was arrested
in April 1930, angry crowds marched through
the streets of Peshawar, confronted by
armored cars and police !ring. Many people
were killed. When Mahatma Gandhi was
arrested a month later, industrial workers
attacked police stations, municipal buildings,
law courts, and railway stations in Sholapur.
A terri!ed government responded with a
brutal repression policy. Women and children
were beaten, and peaceful Satyagrahis were
attacked, and nearly 100000 people were
arrested.

Seeing the widespread acts of violence

against the common people, Gandhi had to
call o$ the Civil Disobedience Movement,
entering into the Gandhi-Irwin pact on March
5, 1931. According to this pact, Gandhi agreed
to be a part of a Round Table Conference in
London and the British government agreed
to release the political prisoners. Hence, in
December 1931, Gandhi went to attend the
round table conference in London. However,
he returned disappointed as the negotiations
did not proceed as per his proposals. After
his return, he found that the political
prisoners, like Jawaharlal Nehru and Gha$ar
Khan were still imprisoned. Also, the British
government had declared Congress to be
illegal, along with a number of new
repressive impositions to prevent meetings,
boycotts, and rallies. Therefore, Gandhi had
to relaunch the movement of Civil
Disobedience, however, it lost its pace by
1934.

Limitations of the Civil Disobedience

Movement
Some social groups were unable to relate to
the concept of Swaraj. One such group was
the nation's 'untouchables,' who began to
refer to themselves as Dalit or oppressed
since the 1930s. For a long time, Congress
ignored the Dalits out of fear of upsetting the
Sanatanis, or conservative high-caste Hindus.
However, Mahatma Gandhi declared that
swaraj would not come for another hundred
years unless untouchability was abolished.
He lovingly called the ‘untouchables’
Harijans, God’s children. Gandhi organized
Satyagraha to ensure their entry at temples,
and to ensure their access to public tanks,
wells, schools, and roads. Gandhi himself
cleaned toilets to elevate the work of the
bhangi (the sweepers) and convinced the
upper castes to change their hearts and
abandon "the sin of untouchability."
However, many Dalit leaders desired a
di$erent political solution to the
community's problems.

They began to organize and demand

reserved seats in educational institutions as
well as a separate electorate to select Dalit
members for legislative councils. They
believed that political empowerment would
solve their social disabilities. The
participation of the Dalit social group was
limited in this movement, especially in
Maharashtra and Nagpur where the Dalit
organization was su#ciently strong.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar had formed the Depressed

Classes Association in 1930. At the Second
Round Table Conference, he clashed with
Mahatma Gandhi, demanding separate
electorates for Dalits. When the British
government agreed to Ambedkar's demand,
Gandhiji started observing a fast unto death.
Separate electorates for Dalits, he believed,
would decelerate the process of their
integration into society. Ambedkar
eventually agreed to Gandhiji's proposal and
entered into the Poona Pact of September
1932.

The Depressed Classes (later known as the

Scheduled Castes) were given reserved seats
in provincial and central legislative councils,
but they had to be elected by the general
electorate.

Some Muslim political groups also were not

actively participating in the Civil
Disobedience Movement. Following the end
of the Khilafat movement, many Muslims felt
alienated from Congress. Beginning in the
mid-1920s, the Congress became more visibly
associated with Hindu religious nationalist
groups such as the Hindu Mahasabha. As
Hindu-Muslim relations deteriorated, each
community organized religious processions
with militant zeal, sparking Hindu-Muslim
communal clashes and riots in various cities.
Each riot aggravated the clash between the
two communities.

The Muslim League and Congress seemed to

form an alliance in 1927. The major
di$erences between the two political bodies
were regarding the representation of each in
the assemblies to be elected in the future.
Muhammed Ali Jinnah was ready to let go of
the demand for separate electorates only if
Congress assured reserved seats for Muslims
in the Central Assembly and proportional
representation as per the population in the
provinces dominated by Muslims, such as
Punjab and Bengal. In 1928, at the All Parties
Conference, the discussions on Muslim
representation in the assemblies did not
yield anything results when M. R. Jayakar
from Hindu Mahasabha expressed his
opinions strongly in opposition to the
representation arrangements.

As a result, when the Civil Disobedience

Movement began, there was an environment
of suspicion and distrust between the two
communities.

Large sections of Muslims were alienated

from the Congress and were unable to
respond to the call for a united struggle.
Muslim leaders and intellectuals expressed
concern about Muslims' status as a minority
in India. They feared that their cultures and
identities would be submerged under the
dominance of a Hindu majority.

During the early 20th century, growing

resentment against the colonial government
united various groups and classes of Indians
in a common struggle for freedom. The
Congress, led by Mahatma Gandhi,
attempted to channel people's grievances
into organized movements for independence.
Nationalists attempted to forge national
unity through such movements. However,
diverse groups and classes participated in
these movements, each with its own set of
goals and expectations. Freedom from
colonial rule meant di$erent things to
di$erent people because their grievances
were di$erent.

Conclusion
Congress worked tirelessly to reconcile
di$erences and ensure that the demands of
one group did not alienate another. This is
precisely why the movement's unity was
frequently shattered. The high points of
Congress activity and nationalist unity were
followed by periods of disunity and con%icts
within groups. Hence, a nation with many
voices demanding independence from
colonial rule was emerging. The topics and
sub-topics discussed above will help students
with their nationalism in India project work.
The nationalism in India important questions
can be answered with the help of the notes
in nationalism in India PDF.
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