The National Movement: Gandhian Era

1. Gandhi's arrival: South Africa, the India of 1915, the BHU announcement

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• South Africa (1893–1915) — "the making of the Mahatma" (Chandran Devanesan): satyagraha first forged, religious harmony promoted, upper castes confronted over low castes and women.
• India of 1915: Swadeshi 1905–07 had broadened Congress — militant "Lal, Bal and Pal" vs the Moderates: Gandhi's mentor Gokhale, and Jinnah. On Gokhale's advice, a year travelling India.
• BHU speech, Feb 1916: "richly bedecked noblemen" vs the absent "millions of the poor" — "our salvation can only come through the farmer." Statement of fact (nationalism an elite creation) and of intent (make it represent the whole people). Dec 1916, Lucknow Congress: a Champaran peasant seeks help against indigo planters.
• War backdrop: income tax introduced, prices doubled 1913–18, forced recruitment, crop failures + influenza — 12–13 million dead (1921 census).

Year	Milestone
1915	Gandhi returns (January)
1917 / 1918	Champaran / Ahmedabad and Kheda
1919	Rowlatt satyagraha; Jallianwala Bagh (13 April)
1921 / 1922	NCM–Khilafat launched (Jan) / Chauri Chaura, withdrawal (Feb)
1928	Simon boycott; Bardoli
1929	Lahore Congress — Purna Swaraj (Dec)
1930	Pledge 26 Jan; Dandi March 12 March–6 April
1931	Gandhi–Irwin Pact (March); second RTC (Dec)
1932	CDM relaunched; Poona Pact (Sept)
1935 / 1937 / 1939	GoI Act / Congress ministries (8 of 11) / ministries resign
1940 / 1942	Lahore Resolution / Cripps fails, Quit India (Aug)
1946	Polarised elections; Cabinet Mission fails; Direct Action Day 16 Aug
1947 / 1948	Freedom with Partition (15 Aug) / assassination (30 Jan)

2. Satyagraha in action: Champaran, Ahmedabad, Kheda; Rowlatt and Jallianwala Bagh

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• Satyagraha: truth-force; win through non-violence by appealing to the oppressor's conscience — not "passive resistance… of the weak" but active soul-force for the strong.
• Three localised campaigns: Champaran 1917 (indigo tenants — tenure security, freedom of cropping); Ahmedabad 1918 (mill workers); Kheda 1918 (revenue remission after crop failure and plague) — Gandhi marked as champion of the poor.
• Rowlatt Act 1919: wartime detention without trial continued, passed over united Indian opposition; satyagraha from the 6 April hartal. Punjab (war service unrewarded) angriest; Gandhi barred, leaders arrested; Amritsar firing (10 April) → attacks on banks, post offices, stations; martial law under Dyer.
• Jallianwala Bagh, 13 April 1919: protesters plus Baisakhi villagers unaware of martial law; Dyer blocked exits and fired — "hundreds" killed (Class 10, Ch 2 "Nationalism in India"), "400+" (Class 12 Part 3, Ch 3 "Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement") — for "a moral effect". Then the crawling order, floggings, bombed villages (Gujranwala). Gandhi called the movement off as violence spread — but Rowlatt made him a truly national leader; its urban limits showed the need for Hindu–Muslim unity.

3. Non-Cooperation and Khilafat, 1920–22

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• Why: Hind Swaraj (1909) — British rule survives on Indian cooperation; withdraw it and swaraj within a year. Stages: surrender titles → boycott services, courts, councils, schools, foreign goods → civil disobedience if repressed.
• Khilafat bridge: Ottoman defeat threatened the Khalifa; Khilafat Committee, Bombay, March 1919 (Muhammad and Shaukat Ali) — Khalifa keeps the Muslim sacred places, jazirat-ul-Arab under Muslim sovereignty. Proposed at Calcutta special session Sept 1920; adopted at Nagpur Dec 1920.
• From Jan 1921: students, teachers, lawyers quit; councils boycotted except Madras — the Justice Party of non-Brahmans. Foreign-cloth imports halved 1921–22: Rs 102 → 57 crore; liquor picketing, cloth bonfires. 1921: 396 strikes, 6 lakh workers; Andhra hill tribes broke forest laws, Awadh withheld taxes, Kumaun refused to carry loads — often defying local nationalist leadership. Towns slowed: khadi dearer than mill cloth, alternative institutions slow to appear.
• Withdrawal: Chauri Chaura, Feb 1922 (Gorakhpur) — police station torched; Gandhi called off the movement, judging satyagrahis untrained. The Raj had been shaken to its foundations for the first time since 1857. Gandhi arrested March 1922 for sedition; Justice Broomfield, sentencing six years, called him "a great patriot and a leader".

4. The people's Mahatma: differing strands of swaraj

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• By 1922 the movement had hundreds of thousands of peasants, workers, artisans. Deliberate identification: dhoti and shaved head (1921); daily charkha — breaking the mental/manual caste boundary, critiquing machine civilisation.
• "Gandhi as Mahatma" (Shahid Amin, eastern UP 1921): darshan crowds; rumours of miracles (the splitting karah, wheat turned sesamum, critics' houses burning) — "Gandhi baba/Maharaj", saviour from taxes and officials; rumours as evidence of popular belief.
• Beneath the charisma, organisation: Praja Mandals in princely states; the message in mother tongues, PCCs on linguistic lines; business backing (G.D. Birla); the 1917–22 cohort — Mahadev Desai, Patel, Kripalani, Bose, Azad, Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, G.B. Pant, Rajagopalachari.
• Swaraj from below (Class 10, Ch 2 "Nationalism in India"):
• Awadh: Baba Ramchandra (sanyasi, ex-Fiji indentured labourer) vs taluqdars' rents, cesses, begar, evictions; nai–dhobi bandhs; Oudh Kisan Sabha, Oct 1920 (J. Nehru, Ramchandra) — 300+ branches in a month. 1921: taluqdars' houses attacked, bazaars looted, in Gandhi's name ("no taxes", "land to the poor") — outran Congress.
• Gudem Hills (Andhra): guerrilla struggle vs forest closures and road begar; Alluri Sitaram Raju — held divine, bullet-proof; praised Gandhi and khadi yet insisted on force; executed 1924, folk hero.

• Assam plantations: swaraj = leaving the gardens (barred by the Inland Emigration Act 1859) for home and land under "Gandhi Raj"; thousands left, were stranded and beaten.

• Not the Congress programme — yet chanting Gandhi's name tied each group emotionally to an all-India movement.

5. The road back to mass politics, 1922–30

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• After withdrawal: C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru's Swaraj Party — council entry, oppose from within; younger J. Nehru and Bose — radical agitation, full independence. Gandhi (freed Feb 1924): khadi and abolition of untouchability.
• Late-1920s forces: the Depression — prices falling from 1926, collapsing after 1930; the Simon Commission — no Indian member, met in 1928 with "Go back Simon" (Congress and League together); Lala Lajpat Rai died of injuries from a police assault. Bardoli 1928 — Patel's successful anti-revenue-hike satyagraha.
• Irwin's Oct 1929 vague "dominion status" offer failed. Lahore Congress, Dec 1929: Nehru president (baton to the young), "Purna Swaraj". 26 Jan 1930 Independence Day — the pledge (freedom an inalienable right; an oppressive government may be altered or abolished). Thin turnout → abstract freedom needed a concrete everyday grievance.

6. Civil Disobedience and the Salt Satyagraha, 1930–34

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• Why salt: letter to Irwin, 31 Jan 1930 — eleven demands spanning all classes; ultimatum 11 March; centrepiece the salt tax. Salt: consumed by all; state monopoly of manufacture and sale; Gandhi's "fourfold curse", taxed "more than 1,000 per cent".
• Dandi: 12 March 1930 from Sabarmati, 78 volunteers, 240 miles, ~24 days; 6 April — salt from boiled sea water: "when a whole nation is roused… no leader is necessary."
• CDM vs NCM: not just refusing cooperation but breaking colonial laws — salt made nationwide, cloth boycott, liquor picketing, revenue and chaukidari tax refusal, officials resigning, forest-law violations.
• Repression and pact: Ghaffar Khan's arrest (Apr 1930) — Peshawar crowds vs armoured cars; Gandhi's arrest — Sholapur workers attacked police posts, courts, stations. Arrests ~60,000 post-march (Class 12 Part 3, Ch 3 "Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement") / ~100,000 overall (Class 10, Ch 2 "Nationalism in India"). Gandhi–Irwin Pact, 5 March 1931: CDM off, prisoners freed, coastal salt-making allowed — no independence commitment. First RTC (Nov 1930) futile without Congress; at the second (late 1931) Gandhi's claim to represent India challenged by the League, the Princes, and Ambedkar. Failure → Willingdon's repression (Congress illegal); relaunched CDM lost momentum by 1934.
• Three significances: world attention (Time: scorn → "Saint and Statesman"); first mass women's participation — Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay persuaded Gandhi not to restrict protest to men; British realisation the Raj must devolve power.

7. Participants and limits: classes, women, dalits, Muslims

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• Rich peasants (Patidars, Jats): hit by the price collapse; swaraj = lower revenue — revenue unrevised in 1931, many refused to rejoin in 1932.
• Poor peasants: wanted rent remission; joined Socialist/Communist-led movements; Congress avoided "no rent" to keep landlords and rich peasants.
• Business: WWI profits; FICCI 1927 (Thakurdas, Birla); wanted import protection, a favourable rupee–sterling ratio; funded CDM; cooled after the RTC failure — fear of militancy and socialism.
• Workers: aloof except Nagpur; selective adoption (railway strike 1930, dockworkers 1932, Chotanagpur tin miners in Gandhi caps); Congress kept workers' demands out to hold the industrialists.
• Women: mass entry — marches, salt, picketing, jail; urban high-caste and rural rich-peasant families. Limits: Gandhi held women's duty was home and hearth; Congress allowed only symbolic presence.
• Dalits: Gandhi — no swaraj without ending untouchability; harijan, temple-entry and access satyagrahas; Congress had long feared the sanatanis. Ambedkar (Depressed Classes Association 1930) demanded separate electorates; conceded at the second RTC → Gandhi's fast unto death. Gandhi: separate electorates "ensure bondage in perpetuity"; Ambedkar: "some share of political power… is a paramount necessity". Poona Pact, Sept 1932: reserved seats (provincial and central), voted by the general electorate; the dalit movement stayed wary of Congress.
• Muslims: alienated after Khilafat as Congress neared the Hindu Mahasabha. 1927: Jinnah ready to drop separate electorates for reserved Central Assembly seats + proportional representation in Bengal and Punjab — wrecked at the All Parties Conference 1928 by M.R. Jayakar (Hindu Mahasabha). Iqbal 1930: separate electorates, a "Muslim India within India" — per the chapter, the later "intellectual justification" of the Pakistan demand.
• Revolutionary counterpoint: HSRA 1928 (Bhagat Singh, Jatin Das, Ajoy Ghosh); April 1929 Assembly bomb (Bhagat Singh, Batukeswar Dutta); Bhagat Singh executed at 23 — disclaimed "the cult of the bomb and pistol"; "Inquilab Zindabad!"

8. War, Quit India, Partition and the last heroic days, 1935–48

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• Interlude: GoI Act 1935; 1937 elections — Congress ministries in 8 of 11 provinces. WWII: support offered if independence promised; refused → ministries resigned Oct 1939; individual satyagrahas 1940–41. Lahore Resolution, March 1940 — autonomy for Muslim-majority areas; a three-way struggle (Congress–League–British). Cripps (spring 1942) failed on the demand for an Indian Defence Member.
• Quit India, Aug 1942: Wardha CWC 14 July; AICC, Bombay, 8 Aug — "Do or Die". Leaders jailed at once; socialist underground — Jayaprakash Narayan, Aruna Asaf Ali, Lohia; women — Matangini Hazra (Bengal), Kanaklata Barua (Assam), Rama Devi (Odisha). "Independent" governments at Satara and Medinipur; Satara's prati sarkar (1943) — seba dals, tufan dals, people's courts; kunbi peasants, dalit support; lasted till the 1946 elections. A genuine mass movement, over a year to suppress — while the League expanded into Punjab and Sind.
• Endgame: Gandhi–Jinnah talks (1944) failed; 1945 Labour government committed to independence. Early-1946 elections — Congress swept the General seats, the League the Muslim ones: polarisation complete. Cabinet Mission failed; Direct Action Day, 16 Aug 1946 — Calcutta riots spreading to Bengal, Bihar, UP, Punjab. Mountbatten (Feb 1947): freedom with Partition — 15 Aug 1947.
• Last heroic days: 15 August in Calcutta on a 24-hour fast; refugee-camp rounds; Congress minority-rights resolution — two-nation theory never accepted, India "a democratic secular State". His "finest hour": peace work in Bengal, then Delhi, equal concern for Pakistan's minorities. 30 Jan 1948 — shot dead at his prayer meeting by Nathuram Godse (an attempt had failed 20 Jan). Tributes from Orwell and Einstein; Time likened the martyrdom to Lincoln's.

9. Imagining the nation: the sense of collective belonging

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• Beyond struggle, cultural processes — history, folklore, songs, prints, symbols — made the nation real (Class 10, Ch 2 "Nationalism in India").
• Bharat Mata: image first created by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay — "Vande Mataram" (1870s), later in Anandamath, sung in the Swadeshi movement. Abanindranath Tagore's Bharat Mata (1905): ascetic, calm, divine, dispensing learning, food, clothing; later prints add trishul, lion, elephant. Devotion to the mother figure = proof of nationalism.
• Folklore revival: Rabindranath Tagore collecting ballads and myths in Bengal; Natesa Sastri's four-volume Folklore of Southern India ("folklore is national literature").
• Flags: Swadeshi tricolour — eight lotuses (eight provinces), crescent (Hindus and Muslims); Gandhi's Swaraj flag by 1921 with the spinning wheel (self-help); carrying it aloft — defiance.
• Reinterpreting history: a glorious ancient past followed by colonial decline — pride as spur (Tarinicharan Chattopadhyay's Bharatbarsher Itihas, 1858).
• Exclusionary edge (chapter's caution): when the glorified past and images were Hindu, other communities felt left out.

10. Knowing Gandhi: the sources

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• Public voice vs private scripts: speeches — the public voice; private letters — the unaired anger and anxiety; but the line blurs (letters written with an eye to print; Gandhi published letters in Harijan; Nehru's A Bunch of Old Letters, 1958). Case study — the 1936 socialist–conservative rift: President Nehru's socialism drove Rajendra Prasad and Patel to threaten resignation; the letters show Gandhi as mediator, telling Nehru to keep "the crown of thorns".
• Autobiographies: retrospective, from memory — self-framing; read for silences.
• Through police eyes: Home Department Fortnightly Reports on the Salt March refused to see enthusiasm — "a drama", peasants "harvesting a good rabi" — officials reporting what they wanted to believe, even as districts logged salt-law defiance.
• Newspapers: carry their publishers' politics — London vs Indian nationalist accounts differ (Time's arc is itself evidence). Read every source for what its nature reveals — and conceals.

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Exam angles

Prelims:

• Chronology: the §1 table is the spine — test especially NCM launch Jan 1921 vs Chauri Chaura Feb 1922; Dandi 12 Mar–6 Apr 1930 vs Pact 5 Mar 1931; Poona Pact Sept 1932.
• Sessions: Calcutta special Sept 1920 (NCM proposed) vs Nagpur Dec 1920 (adopted) vs Lahore Dec 1929 (Purna Swaraj, Nehru president); Quit India — Wardha CWC 14 July, Bombay AICC 8 Aug 1942.
• Leader–movement pairings: Baba Ramchandra — Awadh · Alluri Sitaram Raju — Gudem Hills · Patel — Bardoli · Ghaffar Khan — Peshawar · Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay — salt/liquor laws · C.R. Das & Motilal Nehru — Swaraj Party · JP/Aruna Asaf Ali/Lohia — Quit India · Matangini Hazra (Bengal), Kanaklata Barua (Assam), Rama Devi (Odisha).
• Organisations: Khilafat Committee — Bombay, March 1919 · FICCI 1927 · HSRA 1928 (Assembly bomb Apr 1929) · Depressed Classes Association 1930 · Justice Party — Madras non-Brahmans, entered councils during the NCM boycott.
• Poona Pact precision: separate electorates conceded by the British → withdrawn after Gandhi's fast → reserved seats voted by the general electorate.
• Number facts: cloth imports Rs 102 → 57 crore (1921–22); 396 strikes (1921); 78 volunteers, 240 miles; salt tax >1,000%; arrests ~60,000 (Class 12 Part 3, Ch 3 "Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement") vs ~100,000 (Class 10, Ch 2 "Nationalism in India"); 12–13 million deaths (1921 census); 8 of 11 provinces (1937).
• Terms and symbols: begar · nai–dhobi bandh · Inland Emigration Act 1859 · Hind Swaraj 1909 · eleven demands · prati sarkar/seba dal/tufan dal · Vande Mataram — Bankim · Bharat Mata — Abanindranath Tagore 1905 · Swadeshi flag — eight lotuses + crescent · Swaraj flag 1921 — spinning wheel.

Mains:

• How Gandhi turned elite nationalism into a mass movement (BHU 1916 → 1922): technique, local proofs, symbols (dhoti, charkha, salt), organisation (linguistic PCCs, Praja Mandals), identification with the poor.
• "Swaraj meant different things to different people": peasants, tribals, plantation workers, workers, business, women — why Congress unity kept breaking down yet all related to one all-India movement.
• NCM vs CDM: refusal of cooperation vs breach of law; participation profiles; withdrawal (Chauri Chaura) vs decline (1932–34).
• Salt as symbol: universality, everyday oppression; the march's three significances (world attention, women, British realisation).
• Gandhi vs Ambedkar on separate electorates — both arguments; Poona Pact terms and legacy.
• Road to Partition: Khilafat unity → alienation (Hindu Mahasabha proximity, 1928 failure, Iqbal 1930) → League's wartime rise → 1946 polarisation and Direct Action; Gandhi's 1947–48 response.
• Women: mass entry via Salt Satyagraha and Quit India vs the symbolic role assigned them.
• Cultural nation-making: icons, folklore, flags, history-writing — belonging with an exclusionary edge.
• Sources: what speeches, private letters (the 1936 exchange), autobiographies, Fortnightly Reports and newspapers each reveal and conceal.