Participants and limits: classes, women, dalits, Muslims

Detail

Gandhi's movements were mass movements. Many different groups joined. But each group joined for its own reason. When Congress could not meet that reason, the group stepped back. That gap between hope and result is the "limit" in this section.

Rich peasants — revenue, not freedom

• Who: Patidars of Gujarat and Jats of Uttar Pradesh. They were big landowners who grew crops to sell in the market.
• The Depression (from 1930) made crop prices crash. Their cash income fell. But the government still asked the same land revenue (the tax a landholder pays the state).
• So for them swaraj meant one thing — lower revenue. They became the backbone of the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) in their areas.
• The limit: when CDM was called off in 1931, revenue was not reduced. They felt cheated. Many refused to rejoin the movement when it restarted in 1932.

Poor peasants — rent, and a Congress that stayed silent

• Poor peasants were mostly tenants — they farmed land owned by someone else and paid rent to that landlord.
• In the Depression they could not even pay rent. Their demand was rent remission (the unpaid rent be cancelled).
• They joined movements led by Socialists and Communists, because those groups took up the rent demand.
• The limit: Congress avoided the "no rent" campaign. Reason — a no-rent call would anger the landlords and the rich peasants, whose money and numbers Congress needed. The poor peasant's main demand was left out.

Business groups — protection, profit, and fear of socialism

• Indian businessmen made large profits during the First World War (1914-18) because imports were cut off and Indian factories got the market.
• After the war they wanted the colonial state to stop blocking their growth. Two clear demands:
• Protection against imports (high duty on foreign goods so Indian goods sell).

• A favourable rupee–sterling exchange ratio, so foreign goods do not become artificially cheap in India.

• They built their own bodies: the Federation of the Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FICCI), formed 1927, led by men like Purshottamdas Thakurdas and G.D. Birla.

• They funded the Civil Disobedience Movement and refused to buy or sell imported goods.
• The limit: after the Round Table Conference failed, their enthusiasm cooled. Two fears —
• long disruption of business and militancy;
• the growing influence of socialism inside the younger Congress ranks, which threatened private property.

Industrial workers — mostly outside, except in patches

• Workers largely stayed aloof from CDM, except in Nagpur, where they came in numbers.
• Where they did join, they picked the Gandhian ideas that matched their own fight against low wages and bad conditions — selective adoption:
• the railway workers' strike of 1930;
• the dockworkers' strike of 1932;

• tin mine workers in Chotanagpur who wore Gandhi caps and joined protest marches.

• The limit: Congress kept workers' demands out of its programme. If Congress backed strikes and wage demands, it would lose the industrialists who funded it. So class conflict was avoided to keep the united front.

Women — mass entry, symbolic place

• Under Gandhi women came out in very large numbers — this was new in Indian politics.
• What they did: joined protest marches, made salt, picketed (stood outside and stopped customers from entering) liquor shops and foreign cloth shops, and went to jail.
• Who they were: mostly high-caste families in the cities and rich peasant households in the villages. Gandhi's call made service to the nation a sacred duty for them.
• The limits:
• Gandhi himself said women's first duty was the home and hearth — looking after house, husband and children.
• Congress was reluctant to give women authority. It allowed them mainly a symbolic presence, not positions of real power.

Dalits — Gandhi, Ambedkar, and the fight over electorates

Gandhi's position

• Gandhi said swaraj would not come for a hundred years if untouchability was not ended.
• He called untouchables harijan — "children of God".
• He organised satyagrahas for temple entry and for access to public wells, tanks, roads and schools.
• Congress had long avoided this issue, fearing the sanatanis — orthodox high-caste Hindus who defended the old caste rules and were a big support base.

Ambedkar's position

• Dr B.R. Ambedkar organised the dalits into the Depressed Classes Association in 1930.
• He demanded separate electorates — seats where only dalit voters vote for dalit candidates. Without this, he argued, dalit representatives would only be men chosen by caste Hindus.
• He clashed with Gandhi at the second Round Table Conference (London, 1931).

The clash and the Pact

• The demand was conceded by the British. The Communal Award of 4 August 1932 set out how legislature seats would be split between communities, and Ambedkar backed it. [2]
• Gandhi, then in prison, announced a fast unto death, which he began on 18 September 1932. [2]
• Gandhi's argument: separate electorates would cut dalits off from the rest of Hindu society and "ensure their bondage in perpetuity" (keep them trapped forever).

• Ambedkar's argument: "some share of political power… is a paramount necessity" for the depressed classes.

• Ambedkar held his ground until Gandhi was near death, then accepted a compromise. [2]

• Poona Pact, September 1932 (signed 24 September 1932 [2]):
• Separate electorates dropped.
• Dalits (called depressed classes) got reserved seats in the provincial and central legislative councils.
• But those seats were voted on by the general electorate — everyone votes, not only dalits.

• The extra representation was fixed for a ten-year period. [2]

• Aftermath: Ambedkar said the pact was won by blackmail, yet it also began the movement against untouchability inside the national movement. [2] The dalit movement remained cautious and suspicious of Congress for years after.

Muslims — from Khilafat unity to separation

• During Non-Cooperation–Khilafat (1920-22) Hindus and Muslims acted together. After Khilafat ended, large sections of Muslims moved away from Congress.
• Reason: Congress seemed close to openly Hindu organisations, above all the Hindu Mahasabha. Relations worsened through the 1920s with riots and processions.
• The 1927 near-settlement:
• Muhammad Ali Jinnah was willing to give up the demand for separate electorates.
• In return he asked for reserved seats for Muslims in the Central Assembly, and representation in Bengal and Punjab in proportion to population.

• The talks broke down at the All Parties Conference of 1928, when M.R. Jayakar of the Hindu Mahasabha strongly opposed the compromise.

• Iqbal, 1930: Muhammad Iqbal, as President of the Muslim League, restated the demand for separate electorates and spoke of a "Muslim India within India". The chapter treats this speech as giving the later intellectual justification to the Pakistan demand.

• The limit made plain: the question was never only religion. It was about who gets a guaranteed share of seats and power when the British leave.

Revolutionary counterpoint — the young who rejected the Gandhian method

• Not every young Indian accepted non-violence. Many joined revolutionary groups.
• Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), 1928, founded at Ferozeshah Kotla in Delhi — members included Bhagat Singh, Jatin Das and Ajoy Ghosh.
• April 1929: Bhagat Singh and Batukeswar Dutta threw bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi. They did not run — they surrendered on the spot so they could use the trial as a platform. [3][4]
• The protest targeted two repressive bills — the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill. [4]
• The pamphlet they threw carried the line that the blast was "to make the deaf hear". [4]

• The case is preserved in official records as Assembly Bomb Case No. 9 of 1929, Crown vs. Bhagat Singh and Bhatukeshwar Dutta. [4]

• Bhagat Singh was executed at the age of 23 — hanged at Lahore on 23 March 1931, now marked as Martyrs' Day. [3]

• His own words matter for the exam:
• He disclaimed "the cult of the bomb and pistol" — he did not believe terror alone frees a country.
• His slogan: "Inquilab Zindabad!" — Long live the revolution.

Prelims Hooks

• FICCI was formed in 1927; leading figures Purshottamdas Thakurdas and G.D. Birla.
• Depressed Classes Association was founded by Ambedkar in 1930.
• The Communal Award was announced on 4 August 1932; Gandhi began his fast unto death on 18 September 1932. [2]
• The Poona Pact was signed on 24 September 1932: separate electorates dropped, reserved seats for depressed classes filled by the general electorate, for ten years. [2]
• M.R. Jayakar (Hindu Mahasabha) blocked the Jinnah compromise at the All Parties Conference, 1928.
• Iqbal's 1930 address demanded separate electorates and a "Muslim India within India".
• HSRA was founded in 1928; Bhagat Singh, Batukeswar Dutta bombed the Central Legislative Assembly in April 1929, protesting the Public Safety and Trade Disputes bills. [4]
• Bhagat Singh was hanged on 23 March 1931 at Lahore, aged 23. [3]
• Workers stayed largely aloof from CDM except at Nagpur; Chotanagpur tin miners wore Gandhi caps.
• Nagpur, railway strike 1930, dockworkers' strike 1932 — the three worker markers of CDM.

Mains Points

• One movement, many meanings of swaraj. Rich peasants read swaraj as lower revenue, poor peasants as cancelled rent, businessmen as tariff protection, workers as better wages, women as national service. Congress's strength was holding them together; its limit was that it could not satisfy them all at once. Where a demand would split the front — no-rent, strikes — Congress dropped the demand, not the ally. That explains both the scale of CDM and the withdrawal of 1932.
• Inclusion without power. Women entered in huge numbers and filled the jails, but Gandhi's own view of women's duty (home and hearth) and Congress's preference for a symbolic presence kept them out of decision-making. Mass participation is not the same as a share of authority — a useful line for any GS-I question on women in the national movement.
• Gandhi–Ambedkar: two theories of dalit freedom. Gandhi saw untouchability as a sin inside Hinduism, to be removed by the reform of caste Hindus; Ambedkar saw it as a power problem, to be fixed by guaranteed political representation. The Poona Pact (1932) was a compromise on Ambedkar's method, not on his diagnosis — reserved seats survived into the Constitution, while the dalit movement's distrust of Congress also survived. [2]
• The communal question was constitutional, not only religious. The failure of the 1927 Jinnah formula at the 1928 All Parties Conference, blocked by the Hindu Mahasabha, and Iqbal's 1930 counter-move show that the Pakistan demand grew out of a repeated failure to agree on minority safeguards in a future legislature. Compare with the dalit case: both were fights over electorates and seats, but one ended in a pact and the other in partition.