Exploring Society II · Chapter 2 — India’s Long Road to Independence

Imagine being told, after a terrible war, that your new rulers will now treat you fairly and respect your customs, and then finding that almost nothing changes. That is roughly what Indians experienced after the Great Uprising of 1857.

Direct rule by the Crown (1858). In 1858 the British Crown, under Queen Victoria, took control of India away from the East India Company. British India was now governed in the Queen's name by the Secretary of State for India, sitting in London, and the Viceroy (also called the Governor-General), the Queen's representative in India.

The royal proclamation. A proclamation issued in Victoria's name made three main promises:

• Around 560 Indian princes would keep ruling their own states, but under British supremacy, called paramountcy.
• Indians would be cared for like all the Queen's other subjects.
• There would be no attempt to force Christianity on anyone.

Promises versus practice. The message was that Britain now wanted to rule peacefully rather than by force. In practice the promises were not kept:

• A British Resident or Political Agent was posted in almost every princely state and often interfered, so the princes' freedom became largely symbolic.
• Missionary activity continued, often with indirect official support such as grants of land in towns.
• Economic exploitation went on. Heavy land taxes contributed to severe famines, and local industries could not compete with cheap British factory goods.
• Indians were treated as an 'inferior race'. They received less pay than Britons in the same posts; juries were mostly British and went easy on Europeans who harmed Indians; and Indians were kept out of certain clubs, train compartments and parts of cities.

Two laws of 1878. The Arms Act banned Indians from keeping weapons while letting the British keep them. The Vernacular Press Act controlled and censored newspapers in Indian languages.

Why this matters for the story. The gap between fine words and harsh reality made many educated Indians lose faith in British justice. That loss of faith is the soil from which the national movement grew over the next ninety years, from 1857 to 1947.

Resistance to British rule did not begin or end with 1857. In many regions, farmers, tribal communities and local rulers rose up when they lost their land, their rights or their rulers.

The Paika Sangram grew from several grievances: the Raja of Khorda lost his territory after helping the Company in 1803, the royal preceptor Jayee Rajguru was executed in 1806, taxes rose even on land that had been tax-free, salt became dearer, and the old cowrie-shell money was abolished. It is remembered as a broad people's movement.

The Kukas were reformers as well as rebels. They worked against female infanticide, child marriage and dowry, wore simple hand-spun white cloth and even ran their own postal system, long before boycott became a national method.

Western India and the north-east. In Poona in 1897, after a famine and a plague epidemic handled with harsh measures, the three Chapekar brothers shot the British Plague Commissioner and were hanged. In Assam, Maniram Dewan and Piyali Baruah were publicly hanged in 1857, and in Manipur Rani Gaidinliu began fighting the British at just 13, telling people not to pay taxes.

Common threads. Most of these struggles began with land and revenue, or with the British overriding local rulers. They used forests and hills for guerrilla war, and they were crushed with great force. Yet they kept the spirit of defiance alive and became models for later movements.

Before people demand freedom from others, they often look hard at their own society. In the 19th century many Indian thinkers questioned practices such as child marriage, the poor treatment of widows, caste discrimination and the lack of education, especially for girls.

Bankim Chandra and Bande Mataram. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, a Bengali novelist, composed the poem Bande Mataram (Praise to the Mother) in 1875 and placed it in his novel Anandamath (1882), set during the Sannyasi Rebellion and the Bengal famine of 1770. In the novel, the motherland is worshipped as a divine mother. Rabindranath Tagore set the poem to music and sang it at the 1896 Congress session; it became the rallying cry of the movement after 1905, and in 1950 the Constituent Assembly adopted it as India's National Song.

Swami Vivekananda. Born Narendranath Datta in 1863, he studied both Western and Indian thought, became a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, and in 1893 made a famous speech at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago defending India's civilisation. He founded the Ramakrishna Mission to join spiritual practice with social service. He stayed out of politics but urged Indians to overcome fear and self-doubt, to study science (he advised Jamsetji Tata to set up the research institute that became the Indian Institute of Science), and to build the future on India's own roots rather than blindly copying the West. He lived only 39 years, yet inspired many freedom fighters; his birthday, 12 January, is National Youth Day.

Why culture mattered. Reform gave Indians confidence that they could change their own society; songs, novels and speeches gave them pride in their past. Both fed directly into the nationalism that followed.

The Indian National Congress (1885). Allan Octavian Hume, a British officer who blamed colonial policies for India's poverty, resigned in 1882 and gathered like-minded Indians. The Congress held its first session in Bombay in 1885, with 72 delegates from different regions and religions, mostly from the English-educated upper classes. Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee was the first president, and Dadabhai Naoroji played a leading role.

A polite beginning. At first the Congress declared loyalty to the British Crown. Each year it passed resolutions asking for more Indian participation in government, civil rights and some economic reforms, hoping that this would calm discontent. The government mostly ignored them.

Tilak. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a founding member, found such leaders too moderate. In his Marathi newspaper Kesari he wrote fiercely against oppression, and he turned Ganesh Chaturthi and a festival honouring Shivaji into public events that roused people to resist. In 1897 he was sentenced to 18 months' rigorous imprisonment for 'seditious' articles. The people called him Lokmanya, 'revered by the people'. Secret societies also grew: the Anushilan Samiti in Bengal (1902) and V.D. Savarkar's Abhinav Bharat in Maharashtra.

The partition of Bengal (1905). Viceroy Curzon split the huge Bengal Presidency, saying it would improve administration. In reality it applied divide and rule, separating a mostly Muslim east from a mostly Hindu west. Leaders such as Rabindranath Tagore, Surendranath Banerjee and Bipin Chandra Pal united people against it. Processions sang Bande Mataram (the government banned singing it in public), and people tied rakhis on one another as a sign of Hindu–Muslim unity.

Swadeshi and boycott. Two mass programmes spread across India:

• Swadeshi ('of one's own country'): buy Indian-made goods and build Indian industry.
• Boycott: refuse foreign goods, burning foreign cloth and sugar in bonfires, and stay away from British schools, colleges and courts.

The idea was not entirely new: Jamsetji Tata had set up the Swadeshi Mills in Bombay in 1886, Indian businessmen with Lala Lajpat Rai started the Punjab National Bank in Lahore in 1895 with only Indian money, and the chemist Prafulla Chandra Ray founded Bengal Chemicals in 1901.

The result. The partition deepened division between communities, as many Muslim leaders came to support it. But it also produced something the British did not expect: India's first great national awakening. Under steady pressure, the partition was annulled in 1911, and the capital was moved from Calcutta to Delhi.

By 1906 Indian leaders agreed that India was badly treated, but they disagreed on what to demand and how. Watching this disagreement helps us see that a freedom struggle is full of debates.

The Nationalist agenda. In 1906 Bipin Chandra Pal started the English daily Bande Mataram; Aurobindo Ghose soon took charge of it. Without using the word 'independence', it argued for 'absolute national autonomy'. It added National Education to Swadeshi and boycott, and explained a method of passive resistance. In the same year the National Council of Education launched the Bengal National College, with Aurobindo as its first principal, to give an education that was modern but rooted in Indian thought.

Swaraj becomes the goal. At its Calcutta session in December 1906, presided over by Dadabhai Naoroji, the Congress declared Swaraj (self-rule), Swadeshi, Boycott and National Education as its objectives. Swaraj was left undefined: some understood self-rule within the Empire, others full independence.

Bharat Mata. Many Nationalists pictured India as a divine mother. Abanindranath Tagore painted Bharat Mata in 1905; Subramania Bharati translated Bande Mataram into Tamil and wrote poems calling on Mother India to rise; Lala Lajpat Rai started a publication named Vande Mataram in Punjab.

The All-India Muslim League (1906). In December 1906 a group of prominent Muslim leaders founded the Muslim League in Dhaka to protect Muslim political interests. They distrusted the Congress, fearing Muslims would be under-represented. At first the League spoke mainly for the Muslim elite, but this division would later feed the 'Two-Nation' idea.

The Surat split (1907). Alarmed by the call for Swaraj, the British pressured moderate leaders. At the Surat session in December 1907 the Moderates (such as Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Pherozeshah Mehta and Surendranath Banerjee) tried to go back to modest requests for reforms. Tilak was stopped from speaking, chaos broke out, and the Nationalists led by Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai (the 'Lion of Punjab') and Aurobindo held a separate session.

A matter of labels. The British and the Moderates called the Nationalists 'Extremists'. They called themselves simply Nationalists, since they saw nothing extreme in wanting an independent nation.

Some young Indians felt that speeches and boycotts were too slow. They believed that striking at British officials would shake the empire and lead to an armed uprising. Their stories are full of courage and also of tragedy.

Newspapers that fired minds. Moderate papers such as Naoroji's Voice of India criticised policies; Kesari and Bande Mataram demanded freedom; Yugantar, run by revolutionaries linked to the Anushilan Samiti, openly called for revolt. Many such papers were shut down.

Khudiram Bose (1908). In April 1908 Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki threw bombs at a carriage they believed carried Kingsford, a harsh British judge; two British women were killed instead. Prafulla shot himself before capture; Khudiram, only 18, was hanged and became a national hero.

The Alipore Bomb trial. Aurobindo Ghose, his brother Barindra and many others were arrested. The British called Aurobindo 'the most dangerous man we have to deal with'. Defended by Chittaranjan Das, Aurobindo was acquitted after a year-long trial; Barindra was sent to the Cellular Jail. In 1910 Aurobindo moved to Pondicherry, then French, and left politics for spiritual work as Sri Aurobindo. Tilak was tried for sedition and jailed in Mandalay for six years.

More attacks.

• 1909: a magistrate was shot at Nashik by members of Abhinav Bharat; Anant Kanhere, just 18, was hanged.
• 1911: Vanchinathan shot a collector near Tirunelveli who had crushed V.O. Chidambaram Pillai's Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company.
• 1912: a bomb was thrown at Viceroy Hardinge as he entered the new capital, Delhi, on an elephant; he was injured but survived.

The Ghadar Movement (1914–15). The Ghadar Party, founded by Indians in North America such as Lala Hardayal and Sohan Singh Bhakna, tried to spark a mutiny in the British Indian Army during World War I. Rash Behari Bose and Kartar Singh Sarabha worked in India, but the plot was discovered. Kartar Singh was hanged at 19. Rash Behari escaped to Japan, where he later laid the foundation of the Indian National Army.

Bagha Jatin (1915). Jatin Mukherjee of the Anushilan Samiti planned to receive a German arms shipment. Surrounded near Balasore on 9 September 1915, he and his comrades fought a 75-minute gun battle; he died of his wounds the next day.

Kala Pani. The Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands was built for solitary confinement. Prisoners were forced to grind oil by hand and were brutally punished. It became a symbol of sacrifice.

The effect. These acts won wide public sympathy and rattled the government, but they also made it rule with an even harder hand.

Tilak's three tasks. Released in 1914, Tilak set out to reunite the Congress, to build Hindu–Muslim cooperation and to work for home rule. At the Lucknow session of 1916 the two Congress camps reunited, and the Congress and the Muslim League signed the Lucknow Pact, in which the Congress accepted separate electorates for Muslims in the legislative councils.

Home Rule (1916). With Annie Besant, an Irish reformer who strongly supported Indian self-government, Tilak launched the Home Rule Movement. It asked for self-government within the British Empire, a practical first step rather than full independence. Even this was refused.

Gandhi. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, born in Porbandar in 1869, studied law in London and then worked in South Africa, where he faced racial discrimination. There he developed satyagraha ('insistence on truth'): resisting injustice through non-violence (ahimsa) and willing acceptance of suffering. He returned to India in 1915, joined the Congress on Gokhale's advice and, from 1917 to 1918, led satyagrahas for indigo farmers in Bihar, mill workers in Ahmedabad and peasants in Kheda who faced excessive land revenue. Later, Vallabhbhai Patel's successful Bardoli satyagraha (1928) earned him the title 'Sardar'.

Anger after World War I. The war brought no freedom. Food was exported for soldiers, causing shortages, and prices rose. Then the Rowlatt Act of 1919 let the police detain people without trial. Gandhi called a day of prayer and fasting in protest.

Jallianwala Bagh, 13 April 1919. In Amritsar, thousands of men, women and children gathered in an enclosed garden, some for Baisakhi and some to protest peacefully against the arrest of local leaders. Without warning, Brigadier-General Dyer's troops blocked the main exit and fired about 1,650 rounds for some ten minutes at the thickest parts of the crowd.

The response. The massacre shocked the whole country and united Indians of every background. Rabindranath Tagore returned his British knighthood in protest. A British-dominated inquiry condemned Dyer but did not punish him; he was removed from India. Two decades later, Udham Singh shot Michael O'Dwyer, the former lieutenant governor of Punjab who had defended Dyer, in London, and was hanged. Britain has never formally apologised, calling it only a 'deeply shameful' event.

The Non-Cooperation Movement (1920–22). Gandhi asked Indians to stop cooperating with British rule: boycott foreign goods, government schools and courts, and use Swadeshi goods, promising Swaraj within a year if people stayed strictly non-violent. After Tilak's death in August 1920, Gandhi became the undisputed mass leader, and the Congress formally adopted the movement at its Nagpur session in December 1920. Spinning khadi (hand-spun, hand-woven cloth) became its symbol: it gave work to poor villagers and challenged British cloth.

The Khilafat Movement. After World War I the Ottoman Empire was broken up, and the position of its sultan as Caliph, the religious head of the Muslim world, was threatened. In 1919 the Ali brothers and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad launched the Khilafat Movement to defend the Caliph. Gandhi saw a chance to unite Hindus and Muslims, and in 1920 the Khilafat leaders and the Congress joined forces. Not everyone agreed: some Congress members felt Turkey's affairs were not India's concern, and Jinnah left the Congress in 1920, warning against mixing religion with the national movement.

Chauri Chaura (February 1922). In this town in present-day Uttar Pradesh, protesters set a police station on fire and policemen were killed. Gandhi called off the whole movement, calling it inhuman conduct. Many leaders, including Motilal and Jawaharlal Nehru, Chittaranjan Das and Subhas Chandra Bose, disagreed. The Khilafat cause ended when Mustafa Kemal abolished the sultanate (1922) and the Caliphate (1924). Historians note that it united communities for a time but also strengthened a sense of separateness, and riots followed in several places.

Simon Go Back! (1927–28). The Simon Commission came to study reforms without a single Indian member. It was met with black flags. In Lahore in October 1928 the police lathi-charged a peaceful march led by Lala Lajpat Rai; he died two weeks later.

Revolutionaries again. The Hindustan Republican Association, led by Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan and Chandrashekhar Azad, robbed a train carrying government money at Kakori (1925); Bismil and Ashfaqulla were hanged. Renamed the HSRA, the group sought to avenge Lajpat Rai. In 1929 Bhagat Singh and a comrade threw harmless bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly 'to make the deaf hear'. Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were hanged in 1931, aged 22 to 23. Young women joined too, such as Bina Das and the schoolgirls Suniti Chowdhury and Shanti Ghosh.

From dominion status to complete independence. In 1928 the Motilal Nehru Report asked for dominion status: full internal self-rule, but with Britain still controlling defence and foreign policy and the British monarch still head of state, as in Canada or Australia. Britain refused even this. Younger leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose pressed for more, and in December 1929, at the Lahore session, the Congress demanded Purna Swaraj, complete independence. The idea was not new: Aurobindo had raised it in 1908, Hasrat Mohani in 1921 and Savarkar in 1925.

The Salt March (1930). To put the demand into action, Gandhi began the Civil Disobedience Movement with a 380-km march to Dandi on the Gujarat coast in March–April 1930, where he made salt. The government held a monopoly on salt and taxed it heavily, so breaking the salt law was a simple symbol every Indian could understand. Thousands were arrested, including Gandhi, but salt marches, boycotts of foreign cloth and refusal to pay taxes spread. Large numbers of women joined. Sarojini Naidu, a poet and orator who had become the first Indian woman president of the Congress in 1925, marched with Gandhi.

Qissa Khwani Bazaar (23 April 1930). In Peshawar, troops fired on a peaceful crowd protesting the arrest of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a leader committed to non-violence, killing hundreds. Two platoons of the Garhwal Rifles under Chandra Singh Garhwali refused to fire on unarmed people and chose jail instead.

Pacts and reforms.

• Gandhi–Irwin Pact (1931): non-violent prisoners were freed and limited salt-making allowed; the Congress suspended the movement and attended the Round Table Conference in London, which produced no breakthrough. The movement was finally withdrawn in 1934.
• Government of India Act (1935): elected provincial governments, but Britain kept defence, foreign affairs and internal security, and governors could take over.
• Poona Pact: B.R. Ambedkar wanted separate electorates for the Depressed Classes (now Scheduled Castes) to protect their voice; Gandhi feared this would divide Hindu society and fasted. The compromise gave more reserved seats instead of separate electorates.

The idea of separate nations. Muslims mostly stayed away from Civil Disobedience. In 1930 the poet Muhammad Iqbal proposed a separate Muslim territory in the north-west within a larger Indian federation. Most Congress leaders, including Maulana Azad and Abdul Ghaffar Khan, rejected the Two-Nation idea, but Jinnah later endorsed the demand for Pakistan. The Hindu Mahasabha under Savarkar also spoke of Hindus and Muslims as two nations, without asking for partition.

A war India did not choose (1939–45). India was dragged into World War II without being consulted. Over 2.5 million Indian soldiers served, the largest volunteer army in history, and at least 87,000 died. At home there were shortages and high taxes, and because grain was sent abroad on Churchill's orders, a terrible famine struck Bengal in 1943 and millions died.

Subhas Chandra Bose and the INA. Convinced that only armed struggle would win freedom, Bose escaped house arrest in 1941, went to Germany and then, in 1943, to Singapore. There he formed the Indian National Army from prisoners of war and volunteers and proclaimed the Azad Hind government. The INA fought beside Japan in Burma and north-east India (Manipur and Nagaland) but was defeated in 1944. Many admired his courage; others criticised his alliance with Germany and Japan.

Quit India (1942). The Cripps Mission of 1942 offered dominion status after the war, with a right for provinces to opt out; most leaders rejected it. In August 1942 Gandhi launched the Quit India Movement with the call Do or Die. Almost all Congress leaders were arrested at once, but people carried on: strikes, protests, attacks on government buildings, an underground movement led by people like Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan. Aruna Asaf Ali hoisted the flag in Bombay and went underground; 17-year-old Kanaklata Barua was shot while leading a flag march in Assam. The Viceroy called it the most serious rebellion since 1857.

Britain loosens its grip (1945–47). The war left Britain exhausted, and empires everywhere began to end. In 1946 mutinies in the Royal Indian Air Force and the Royal Indian Navy showed Britain could no longer rely on Indian soldiers. The Cabinet Mission of 1946 proposed a plan, but the Congress and the Muslim League could not agree. Jinnah called Direct Action Day on 16 August 1946 to demand Pakistan; terrible communal violence followed in Calcutta. An Interim Government under Nehru took office in September 1946.

Partition and independence. In 1947 Viceroy Mountbatten gave Cyril Radcliffe, a lawyer who did not know India, just five weeks to draw borders splitting Punjab and Bengal. India and Pakistan (West and East; East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971) were created. Millions migrated and massacres followed. India became free on 15 August 1947. Sardar Patel, the 'Iron Man of India', persuaded over 560 princely states to join India, using force only as a last resort.

Who won freedom? Historians now credit many forces together: Gandhian mass movements, revolutionaries, popular uprisings, the mutinies, Britain's weakness after the war and the worldwide end of empires. From 1857 to 1947, ninety years of collective sacrifice won India's independence.