This chapter picks up the freedom struggle from 1919 and runs it up to the eve of the Second World War, with a brief Quit India coda at the end. The First World War wrecked the Indian economy: defence spending exploded, customs duties and income tax climbed, prices doubled between 1913 and 1918, forced rural recruitment bred resentment, and the 1918-19 famine plus influenza killed 12-13 million people (Census of 1921). Into this misery walked Mahatma Gandhi, returned from South Africa in January 1915, carrying the method of satyagraha already tested at Champaran (1917), Ahmedabad and Kheda (1918). The Rowlatt Act of 1919 triggered his first all-India hartal on 6 April; the Jallianwala Bagh massacre on 13 April under General Dyer turned the country irreversibly anti-British. Gandhi welded Hindu-Muslim unity by joining the Khilafat cause led by the Ali brothers, and the Nagpur Congress of December 1920 adopted Non-Cooperation. Each social bloc read swaraj differently: students and lawyers walked out in towns, Awadh peasants rallied under Baba Ramchandra and Nehru's Oudh Kisan Sabha, Andhra tribals followed Alluri Sitaram Raju in armed revolt, Assam plantation workers chased 'Gandhi Raj' across the railway lines. Chauri Chaura (February 1922) forced Gandhi to call the movement off. The Simon Commission (1928), Lahore Congress's Purna Swaraj resolution (December 1929), the Dandi Salt March (12 March to 6 April 1930), the Gandhi-Irwin Pact (5 March 1931), the failed Second Round Table Conference, and the Poona Pact (September 1932) trace the second arc of the struggle. Women's mass entry into picketing and salt-making, business support channelled through FICCI (1927) and G.D. Birla, Ambedkar's separate-electorate demand answered by Gandhi's fast unto death, and Iqbal's 1930 League address that seeded the Pakistan demand are all in this chapter. The chapter closes with Bharat Mata imagery, folk revival by Rabindranath Tagore and Natesa Sastri, the 1921 Swaraj flag and the reinterpretation of Indian history forging a sense of collective belonging.
Nationalism in India
Class 10 · History
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Summary
Topic-wise Notes (7)
1
First World War, Khilafat and the Idea of Satyagraha
The war shattered any goodwill towards the Raj. Defence spending was met by war loans, fresh income tax and higher customs duties; prices doubled between 1913 and 1918; villages were stripped of recruits; crops failed in 1918-19 and 1920-21; influenza followed. The Census of 1921 records 12-13 million deaths from famine and epidemic. Into this vacuum stepped Mahatma Gandhi, who returned from South Africa in January 1915. Satyagraha, in his framing, was not passive resistance. It was active soul-force: if the cause was just, truth itself would defeat the oppressor without physical violence, by appealing to the conscience of the wrongdoer. He proved the technique on Indian soil three times before going national. Champaran (1917) targeted the indigo plantation system in Bihar. Ahmedabad (1918) was for cotton mill workers. Kheda (1918) backed Gujarat peasants demanding revenue relief after crop failure and plague. Mark for prelims: Champaran came first, Kheda and Ahmedabad followed in 1918.
Key terms
- Satyagraha
- Champaran 1917
- Kheda 1918
- Forced recruitment
2
The Rowlatt Act and Jallianwala Bagh
The Rowlatt Act was rushed through the Imperial Legislative Council in 1919 despite unanimous opposition from Indian members. It armed the government with sweeping powers to muzzle political work and permitted detention without trial for up to two years. Gandhi answered with a nationwide hartal on 6 April 1919. Cities saw rail strikes and shop closures. Worried about disruption to the railways and telegraph, the British arrested local leaders in Amritsar and stopped Gandhi from entering Delhi. On 10 April Amritsar police fired on a peaceful procession; banks, post offices and railway stations were attacked. Martial law followed and General Dyer took charge. On 13 April 1919, Dyer blocked the only exit of Jallianwala Bagh and opened fire on a crowd that included Baisakhi pilgrims unaware of martial law. Hundreds died. Dyer later admitted he wanted to 'produce a moral effect' of terror. Public retribution was vicious: satyagrahis were forced to crawl, salaam every sahib, and villages near Gujranwala were bombed. Seeing the violence spiral, Gandhi withdrew the Rowlatt satyagraha.
Key terms
- Rowlatt Act 1919
- Hartal 6 April
- Jallianwala Bagh 13 April
- General Dyer
3
Non-Cooperation Movement: Towns, Countryside, Plantations
The Khilafat issue gave Gandhi the bridge to Hindu-Muslim unity. A Khilafat Committee formed in Bombay in March 1919, and the Ali brothers (Muhammad and Shaukat) joined hands. The Calcutta session of September 1920 endorsed Non-Cooperation; the Nagpur session of December 1920 formally adopted it after fierce internal debate. Programme: surrender titles, boycott schools, courts, councils, foreign goods; if repression came, full civil disobedience. The movement began in January 1921. In towns, students and teachers walked out, lawyers like Motilal Nehru gave up practice, councils were boycotted (except Madras, where the non-Brahman Justice Party contested). Foreign cloth imports halved from Rs 102 crore to Rs 57 crore between 1921 and 1922. Khadi was costlier than mill cloth, so the city movement slowed. In Awadh, Baba Ramchandra led peasants against talukdars demanding begar; Jawaharlal Nehru helped set up the Oudh Kisan Sabha (October 1920). In Andhra's Gudem Hills, Alluri Sitaram Raju ran a guerrilla campaign in Gandhi's name (executed 1924). Assam's plantation workers defied the Inland Emigration Act of 1859 to walk home, believing 'Gandhi Raj' had come.
Key terms
- Khilafat Committee 1919
- Nagpur 1920
- Oudh Kisan Sabha
- Alluri Sitaram Raju
4
Civil Disobedience: Salt March to Gandhi-Irwin Pact
After Chauri Chaura (February 1922) Gandhi withdrew Non-Cooperation. C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru formed the Swaraj Party to fight council elections; Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose pushed for full independence. The 1928 all-British Simon Commission was met with 'Go back Simon'. Lord Irwin's vague October 1929 dominion-status offer satisfied no one. The Lahore Congress of December 1929, presided by Nehru, demanded Purna Swaraj; 26 January 1930 was observed as Independence Day. Why salt? Because every household used it and the salt tax exposed colonial exploitation in one item. On 31 January 1930 Gandhi sent Irwin eleven demands. The march began on 12 March from Sabarmati with 78 volunteers, covered 240 miles in 24 days, and on 6 April 1930 Gandhi made salt at Dandi. Civil Disobedience meant breaking colonial laws, not just refusing cooperation. About 1,00,000 were arrested. The Gandhi-Irwin Pact of 5 March 1931 freed prisoners and brought Gandhi to the Second Round Table Conference in December 1931. Talks failed. The movement was relaunched but petered out by 1934.
Key terms
- Purna Swaraj 1929
- Dandi 6 April 1930
- Gandhi-Irwin Pact 1931
- Second Round Table
5
Differing Visions of Swaraj: Peasants, Business, Workers, Women
Each group read swaraj through its own grievance. Rich peasants - Patidars of Gujarat, Jats of UP - hit by the Depression's collapse in commercial-crop prices, joined hard for revenue cuts and felt betrayed when 1931's pact left rates untouched. Poor tenants wanted unpaid rent to landlords remitted; the Congress, fearing to alienate landlords, would not back 'no rent' campaigns, and so kept these tenants at arm's length. Industrialists, having profited in the war, formed the Indian Industrial and Commercial Congress (1920) and FICCI (1927), led by Purshottamdas Thakurdas and G.D. Birla. They financed Civil Disobedience hoping for tariff protection and a favourable rupee-sterling ratio - but cooled after the Round Table failure and the rise of socialist voices in the Congress. Industrial workers stayed largely aloof except in Nagpur; railway workers struck in 1930, dockworkers in 1932; Chotanagpur tin miners wore Gandhi caps. Women came out in unprecedented numbers - high-caste in cities, rich-peasant households in villages - to picket liquor and foreign cloth, make salt, court jail. Yet Gandhi still saw their primary duty as home and hearth, and the Congress kept their role symbolic.
Key terms
- FICCI 1927
- Patidars and Jats
- No-rent campaign
- Bardoli Satyagraha 1928
6
Limits of the Movement: Dalits, Muslims, Poona Pact
Two communities the Congress could not fully carry were dalits and Muslims. Gandhi called the untouchables 'harijan', cleaned toilets to dignify the bhangi, and ran satyagrahas for temple entry and access to wells, tanks and roads. Dr B.R. Ambedkar wanted a political fix, not moral persuasion. He organised the Depressed Classes Association in 1930 and at the Second Round Table demanded separate electorates for dalits. When the British conceded, Gandhi went on a fast unto death, fearing separate electorates would slow social integration. The Poona Pact of September 1932 was the compromise: dalits (later Scheduled Castes) got reserved seats in provincial and central legislatures, but the general electorate would vote them in. After the Khilafat collapsed, Muslims drifted from the Congress; the Congress's drift towards groups like the Hindu Mahasabha widened the gap. The 1928 All Parties Conference broke down when M.R. Jayakar opposed compromise. Jinnah was willing to drop separate electorates for reserved Muslim seats and proportional representation in Bengal and Punjab. In 1930 Sir Muhammad Iqbal's League presidential address argued for separate electorates - this is widely cited as the intellectual seed of the Pakistan demand.
Key terms
- Harijan
- Poona Pact September 1932
- Depressed Classes Association 1930
- Iqbal 1930 address
7
Sense of Collective Belonging: Symbols, Folklore, Flag
Joint struggles alone do not make a nation. Culture had to do its share. The image of Bharat Mata anchored visual nationalism. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote 'Vande Mataram' in the 1870s as a hymn to the motherland and later folded it into his novel Anandamath; the song spread during the Bengal Swadeshi movement. Abanindranath Tagore (1905) painted Bharat Mata as a calm, ascetic figure dispensing learning, food and clothing - mala in hand. Later prints militarised her with trishul, lion and elephant. Folk revival mattered too: Rabindranath Tagore collected Bengali ballads and rhymes; Natesa Sastri compiled 'The Folklore of Southern India' in four volumes, calling folklore the truest record of national thought. Flags became battle standards. The 1905 Swadeshi tricolour (red, green, yellow) carried eight lotuses for eight provinces and a crescent for Hindu-Muslim unity. By 1921 Gandhi had designed the Swaraj flag (red, green, white) with a charkha at the centre. History was rewritten - Tarinicharan Chattopadhyay's 'Bharatbarsher Itihas' (1858) being an early example - to present a glorious ancient India fallen under colonial rule. Note: the Hindu cast of many of these symbols left non-Hindu communities feeling excluded.
Key terms
- Bharat Mata
- Vande Mataram
- Swaraj flag 1921
- Anandamath
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