Fortnightly Reports
Also called: Home Department fortnightly reports · Topic: The National Movement: Gandhian Era · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 3 "Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement"
Meaning
Fortnightly Reports were secret reports on political conditions across India, written every two weeks. The colonial Home Department prepared them from the early twentieth century, using information sent in by the police from each locality. Historians use them to see how British officials viewed the national movement. They also show what officials chose to believe, and so what they left out.
Example
During the Salt March of 1930, the reports refused to admit how excited people were. They called the march "a drama" and said the peasants were too busy "harvesting a good rabi" to care. Yet the same reports recorded salt laws being broken in many districts.
Don't confuse with
- Newspapers: these were public and carried the politics of whoever published them, whether in London or among Indian nationalists. Fortnightly Reports were secret papers written by officials for the government.
Related concepts
- Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi
- Young India and Navajivan
- Harijan
- A Bunch of Old Letters
- Nehru-Patel strands in Congress