INDIAS FREEDOM STRUGGLE

NATIONAL MOVEMENT (1857-1947) BYA.Raghu Raman VIII B

EARLY REVOLTS
The British rule antagonized the people in every part of the country to which it was extended. The exploitation of peasantry was intensified. The government made heavy demands on the Zamindars and chiefs, and their failure to meet these demands led to their dispossession.

EARLY REVOLTS
Land grants given to scholars by Indian rulers were also withdrawn by the British and they were left without any means of support. There were scores of revolts between 1756 and 1856 in different parts of the country. The first major revolt broke out soon after the British conquest of Bengal. It was led by Sanyasis and Fakirs and spread to many areas of eastern India.

REVOLT OF 1857
The year 1857 was an eventful year in the history of the Indian people. It was in that year that the great armed uprising took place against the British rule in India. It began on 10 May 1857 at Meerut. It brought together soldiers of different regions and many rulers and chiefs of different states and principalities to fight for the common aim of overthrowing the British rule.

DISCONTENT AGAINST THE BRITISH RULE The revolt was caused by widespread discontent that the British policies in India had created. Some of those policies are mentioned below.

DISCONTENT AGAINST THE BRITISH RULE

Displacement of the Old ruling sections. Ruination of Peasants and Artisans. Fear of Loss of Religion and Caste. Grievances of the Indian Soldiers.

MAIN CENTRES OF THE REVOLT

Bills in Madhya Pradesh. Kols in Bengal. Gonds & Khonds in Orissa. Kolis in Maharashtra. Vellore mutiny in 1806 & the Brarricikipore mutiny in 1824.

SUPPRESSION OF THE REVOLT

However, in spite of the widespread nature of the revolt, within a little over a year it was suppressed. Delhi was recaptured by the British in September 1857.Bahadur Shah was taken prisoner. Most of these revolts were however, locationed occurrence. Even though it took the British a long time to suppress some of them, they did not face a serious danger to the British rule in India.

CAUSES FOR THE FAILURE OF THE REVOLT

Limited area. Breaking out before planned time. Lack of common leader. Mutual dissensions among the Indians. Lack of discipline among the rebel soldiers. The rebels having no purpose before them.

ACT OF 1858 AND QUEENS PROCLAMATION

In August 1858, the British Parliament passed an Act which put an end to the rule of the Company. The control of the British government in India was transferred to the British Crown. At this time, Victoria was the Queen of Britain.

Queen Victoria

CONTROL OVER THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT FROM BRITAIN

In 1870, a telegraph line was laid between India and Britain. This made communication very easy. Now, day-to-day consultations between the Government of India and the Secretary of State became possible. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869,connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Red sea, greatly reduced the distance between Britain and India.

British Policy of Divide and Rule

They divided the Indian people into the people of the Indian States and the people of British India. In their military administration, they followed the policy of dividing soldiers in the basis of their caste or religion. The British followed a systematic policy of dividing Hindus and Muslims.

Policy towards Afghanistan and Burma

The Russian empire had been expanding in Central Asia in the nineteenth century. This alarmed the British. They tried to increase their influence in Afghanistan to check the Russian advance. The British sent their troops to Afghanistan in 1839,defeated Dost Mohammads army and installed his rival on the throne. In 1852, Burma was invaded and all the coastal provinces of Burma now became part of the British Indian empire.

Famines in India
Famine (Latin, fames, "hunger), severe shortage of food, generally affecting a wide area and large numbers of people. There was frequent occurrence of famines in India. The major reason for this was the absolute dependence of the agriculturists on the monsoons. Even when the harvest was good, they could never store anything to live during a drought.

Famines in India

Modern industries in India

During the second half of the 19th century, a few modern industries were introduced in India. They could be broadly classified as plantation and machine industries. These were mostly owned and controlled by British companies. Some industries were owned by Indians, but they could not develop fast because of the unhelpful attitude of the government.

Tata Iron & Steel Industries

Tata, family of pioneer Indian industrialists and philanthropists. The founder of the Tata business empire was Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (18391904). Born in Navsari, into a Parsi family, Jamsetji studied at Elphinstone College in Bombay before entering his father's business as a general merchant trading with the East. He soon proved highly successful, setting up a branch in Shanghai and steering the family through the speculation and collapse of cotton prices during the American Civil War

Rammohun Roy and Brahmo samaj

Rammohun Roy was born in a well-to-do family in Bengal, probably in 1772. He received his traditional Sanskrit learning at Benaras and Arabic and Persian learning at Patna. His greatest achievement in the field of religious reform was the setting up in 1828 of the Brahmo sabha and, in 1830 Brahmo samaj.

Rammohun Roy
Roy, Ram Mohan (c. 1772-1833), Indian religious reformer. He is best known for his opposition to sati (the practice of widows casting themselves on to the funeral pyre of their dead husbands), but was, more widely, one of the pioneers of the political movement towards Indian independence that evolved and gained strength through the 19th century.

Rammohun Roy
Born at Radhnagar, Roy studied Bengali, Arabic, and English and, through his European friends, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but he specialized in Sanskrit. Coming from a traditional Hindu background, Roy's contact with a wide circle of scholars, including Muslims, Christians, and Jews, broadened his thinking and led him away from orthodox Hinduism. In 1830, Roy was sent by Akbar II, titular ruler of the Mughal empire, as his envoy to the king of Britain, and was given the title of raja, which the British East India Company refused to recognize.

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar

Another great reformer was Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. He was born in a poor Brahmin family in 1820, and had a brilliant career as a student of Sanskrit. Vidyasagars greatest contribution was to the cause of widows upliftment and girls education.

Ramakrishna mission and Vivekananda

Ramakrishna (1834-1886), one of the three great leaders of the Hindu revival in the 19th century; the others were his disciple Vivekananda and Dayananda Sarasvati, founder of the Hindu reform movement Arya Samaj. Vivekananda (1863-1902), foremost disciple of Ramakrishna and one of the key figures in the 19thcentury revival of Hinduism. Vivekananda established first the Ramakrishna Mission in Calcutta, and then a monastic order, designed to regulate and guide the activities of the Mission. These include organizing relief during floods, famines and epidemics, establishing hospitals and running educational institutions.

Vivekananda Memorial, Tamil Nadu

Education
Rabindranath Tagore established the Vishva-Bharati at Santiniketan. Schools were started following the Nai Talim scheme of Gandhiji which aimed at making students self-reliant. One of Indias foremost nationalist leaders,G.K.Gokhale, said in 1903,It is obvious that an illiterate and ignorant nation can never make any solid progress and must fall back in the race of life.

Rabindranath Tagore

Gopal Krishna Gokhale

Growth of Science
The country produced a large number of scientists in every branch of science, some of whom won international fame. C.V.Raman was given the Noble Prize for his work in Physics(the Raman effect) in 1930. S.Ramanujan was one of the greatest mathematicians of this century.

Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman

Rise of National Consciousness

Besides revolts, there gradually grew in India a movement which expressed the aspirations of the Indian people as a nation. It was more widespread than any of the previous revolts and movements and represented demands not of one section or community or region, but of the entire nation.

Formation of the Indian National Congress

Indian National Congress, political party that led the struggle for the independence of India from the British Empire. It formed the mainstay of the Indian nationalist movement and later dominated the country's government. Founded in 1885 by Allan Octavian Hume with a base of support chiefly in the upper-class intelligentsia, the Congress originally advocated limited democratic reforms under British rule.

Formation of the Indian National Congress

Beginning in 1905, it called for swaraj, or selfgovernment, and in 1920 it adopted the strategy of satyagraha (non-violent resistance) devised by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who also widened its support into a true mass movement. By 1929, led by Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress was demanding total independence. During World War II it refused to support the British war effort, launching instead a Quit India campaign that led to violent confrontations and prison terms for about 100,000 of its supporters.

Some important leaders of Congress

Influence Of World Events

Indian leaders were inspired by revolutions and events which happened in different parts of the world. In 1905, there was a revolution in Russia. Russia in those days was ruled by an autocratic emperor and the people had no rights. A heavy tax burden and court extravagances eventually led to a popular revolt and the French Revolution.

Louis XVI

French Soldiers of the Revolutionary Armies

Guillotining of Louis XVI

Vladimir Ilich Lenin

Nicholas II, the Last Russian Tsar

Swadeshi movement
Swadeshi movement, which urged Indians to buy only Indian-made goods. It was largely the weight of his by then highly distinguished presence that helped heal temporarily the emerging rifts between moderates and extremists within Congress in 1906, following British proposals to partition Bengal.

Emergence of Gandhiji
Gandhi finally returned to India in 1915, after the government of the Union of South Africa had made important concessions to his demands, including recognition of Indian marriages and abolition of the poll tax for them Satyagraha, form of non-violent protest invented by Mohandas Gandhi in South Africa and perfected by him in the course of the anti-British struggle in India. The term is made up of two words, satya (truth) and agraha (insisting on something without becoming obstinate), and means both on and for truth.

Gandhiji

Rowlatt Act
In March 1919, the Rowlatt Act was passed. Many leaders who were members of the Assembly, resigned in protest. Mohammad Ali Jinnah who was the president of Muslim League also resigned from the Assembly.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah

Emergence of New Leaders

A new group of young leaders arose in the 1920s. The most prominent of the new leaders were Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Subhas Chandra Bose

Dr.Bhim Rao Ambedkar

Dr.Bhim Rao Ambedkar was a (18911956), Indian lawyer and social reformer who fought for the rights of the Untouchables of India. He was born at Mhow (now Mahu), the fourteenth child in a poor Hindu family who were subcaste, or Untouchables. His father was a soldier and the family moved frequently between military camps.

Dr.Bhim Rao Ambedkar

The Cripps Mission

In early 1942, the War situation compelled the British to have open talks with the Indian leaders. At this time Sir Stafford Cripps, a British Minister, came to India to hold talks with Indian leaders. This is known as the Cripps Mission.

Sir Stafford Cripps

Quit India Movement

In April 1942, the Cripps Mission failed. Within less than four months, the third great mass struggle of the Indian people for freedom started. This struggle is known as the Quit India Movement. On 15th August 1947 dawned India was given freedom.

Louis Mountbatten
Mountbatten served as Viceroy of India from March to August 1947, and governorgeneral of the new dominion of India from August 1947 to June 1948. Mountbatten was killed when a bomb, planted by terrorists of the Irish Republican Army, blew up his fishing boat in Donegal Bay, near his home in County Sligo.

Louis Mountbatten

Louis Mountbatten

THANK YOU FOR WATCHING MY SOCIAL PROJECT

By A.Raghu Raman VIII B