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The year is 1921. You are a student in a |
government-controlled school. Design a |
poster urging school students to answer |
Gandhiji’s call to join the Non-Cooperation |
Movement.Activity59 |
Nationalism in Indiawhich were developing in different parts of India in the years |
after the war. |
In Awadh, peasants were led by Baba Ramchandra – a sanyasi who |
had earlier been to Fiji as an indentured labourer. The movement |
here was against talukdars and landlords who demanded from |
peasants exorbitantly high rents and a variety of other cesses. Peasants |
had to do begar and work at landlords’ farms without any payment. |
As tenants they had no security of tenure, being regularly evicted so |
that they could acquire no right over the leased land. The peasant |
movement demanded reduction of revenue, abolition of begar, and |
social boycott of oppressive landlords. In many places nai – dhobi |
bandhs were organised by panchayats to deprive landlords of the |
services of even barbers and washermen. In June 1920, Jawaharlal |
Nehru began going around the villages in Awadh, talking to thevillagers, and trying to understand their grievances. By October, the |
Oudh Kisan Sabha was set up headed by Jawaharlal Nehru, Baba |
Ramchandra and a few others. Within a month, over 300 brancheshad been set up in the villages around the region. So when the Non- |
Cooperation Movement began the following year, the effort of the |
Congress was to integrate the Awadh peasant struggle into the widerstruggle. The peasant movement, however, developed in forms that |
the Congress leadership was unhappy with. As the movement spread |
in 1921, the houses of talukdars and merchants were attacked, |
bazaars were looted, and grain hoards were taken over. In many |
places local leaders told peasants that Gandhiji had declared that |
no taxes were to be paid and land was to be redistributed amongthe poor. The name of the Mahatma was being invoked to sanction |
all action and aspirations.New words |
Begar – Labour that villagers were forced to |
contribute without any payment |
If you were a peasant in Uttar Pradesh in 1920, |
how would you have responded to Gandhiji’scall for Swaraj? Give reasons for your response.Activity |
On 6 January 1921, the police in United Provinces fired at peasants near Rae Bareli. Jawaharlal Nehru wanted to go tothe place of firing, but was stopped by the police. Agitated and angry, Nehru addressed the peasants who gatheredaround him. This is how he later described the meeting: |
‘They behaved as brave men, calm and unruffled in the face of danger . I do not know how they felt but I know what |
my feelings were. For a moment my blood was up, non-violence was almost forgotten – but for a moment only. Thethought of the great leader, who by God’s goodness has been sent to lead us to victory, came to me, and I saw the |
kisans seated and standing near me, less excited, more peaceful than I was – and the moment of weakness passed, I |
spoke to them in all humility on non-violence – I needed the lesson more than they – and they heeded me andpeacefully dispersed.’ |
Quoted in Sarvapalli Gopal, |
Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography , Vol. I.SourceSource BIndia and the Contemporary World |
60Tribal peasants interpreted the message of Mahatma Gandhi and |
the idea of swaraj in yet another way. In the Gudem Hills of Andhra |
Pradesh, for instance, a militant guerrilla movement spread inthe early 1920s – not a form of struggle that the Congress could |
approve. Here, as in other forest regions, the colonial government |
had closed large forest areas, preventing people from enteringthe forests to graze their cattle, or to collect fuelwood and fruits.This enraged the hill people. Not only were their livelihoodsaffected but they felt that their traditional rights were being denied.When the government began forcing them to contribute begar |
for road building, the hill people revolted. The person who cameto lead them was an interesting figure. Alluri Sitaram Raju claimedthat he had a variety of special powers: he could make correctastrological predictions and heal people, and he could surviveeven bullet shots. Captivated by Raju, the rebels proclaimed thathe was an incarnation of God. Raju talked of the greatness of |
Mahatma Gandhi, said he was inspired by the Non-Cooperation |
Movement, and persuaded people to wear khadi and give up drinking. |
But at the same time he asserted that India could be liberated onlyby the use of force, not non-violence. The Gudem rebels attackedpolice stations, attempted to kill British officials and carried onguerrilla warfare for achieving swaraj. Raju was captured and |
executed in 1924, and over time became a folk hero. |
2.3 Swaraj in the Plantations |
Workers too had their own understanding of Mahatma Gandhi |
and the notion of swaraj. For plantation workers in Assam, freedommeant the right to move freely in and out of the confined space inwhich they were enclosed, and it meant retaining a link with the |
village from which they had come. Under the Inland Emigration |
Act of 1859, plantation workers were not permitted to leave thetea gardens without permission, and in fact they were rarely givensuch permission. When they heard of the Non-CooperationMovement, thousands of workers defied the authorities, left theplantations and headed home. They believed that Gandhi Raj was |
coming and everyone would be given land in their own villages. |
They, however, never reached their destination. Stranded on the wayby a railway and steamer strike, they were caught by the police andbrutally beaten up.Find out about other participants in the |
National Movement who were captured and |
put to death by the British. Can you think of a |
similar example from the national movement |
in Indo-China (Chapter 2)?Activity61 |
Nationalism in IndiaThe visions of these movements were not defined by the Congress |
programme. They interpreted the term swaraj in their own ways,imagining it to be a time when all suffering and all troubles would |
be over. Yet, when the tribals chanted Gandhiji’s name and raised |
slogans demanding ‘ Swatantra Bharat’ , they were also emotionally |
relating to an all-India agitation. When they acted in the name of |
Mahatma Gandhi, or linked their movement to that of the Congress, |
they were identifying with a movement which went beyond the limitsof their immediate locality. |
Fig. 5 – Chauri Chaura, 1922. |
At Chauri Chaura in Gorakhpur, a peaceful demonstration in a bazaar turned into a |
violent clash with the police. Hearing of the incident, Mahatma Gandhi called a haltto the Non-Cooperation Movement.India and the Contemporary World |
623 Towards Civil Disobedience |
In February 1922, Mahatma Gandhi decided to withdraw the |
Non-Cooperation Movement. He felt the movement was turningviolent in many places and satyagrahis needed to be properly trainedbefore they would be ready for mass struggles. Within the Congress,some leaders were by now tired of mass struggles and wanted toparticipate in elections to the provincial councils that had been set |
up by the Government of India Act of 1919. They felt that it was |
important to oppose British policies within the councils, argue forreform and also demonstrate that these councils were not trulydemocratic. C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru formed the Swaraj Partywithin the Congress to argue for a return to council politics. Butyounger leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose |
pressed for more radical mass agitation and for full independence. |
In such a situation of internal debate and dissension two factors |
again shaped Indian politics towards the late 1920s. The first wasthe effect of the worldwide economic depression. Agricultural pricesbegan to fall from 1926 and collapsed after 1930. As the demandfor agricultural goods fell and exports declined, peasants found it |
difficult to sell their harvests and pay their revenue. By 1930, the |
countryside was in turmoil. |
Against this background the new Tory government in Britain |
constituted a Statutory Commission under Sir John Simon. Set upin response to the nationalist movement, thecommission was to look into the functioning of |
the constitutional system in India and suggest |
changes. The problem was that the commissiondid not have a single Indian member. They wereall British. |
When the Simon Commission arrived in India in |
1928, it was greeted with the slogan ‘Go back |
Simon’. All parties, including the Congress and the |
Muslim League, participated in the demonstrations.In an effort to win them over, the viceroy, LordIrwin, announced in October 1929, a vague offerof ‘dominion status’ for India in an unspecifiedfuture, and a Round Table Conference to discuss a |
future constitution. This did not satisfy the Congress |
leaders. The radicals within the Congress, led by |
Fig. 6 – Meeting of Congress leaders at Allahabad, 1931. |
Apart from Mahatma Gandhi, you can see Sardar Vallabhbhai |
Patel (extreme left), Jawaharlal Nehru (extreme right) and SubhasChandra Bose (fifth from right).63 |
Nationalism in IndiaJawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose, became more assertive. |
The liberals and moderates, who were proposing a constitutional |
system within the framework of British dominion, gradually lost |
their influence. In December 1929, under the presidency of JawaharlalNehru, the Lahore Congress formalised the demand of ‘PurnaSwaraj’ or full independence for India. It was declared that 26 January1930, would be celebrated as the Independence Day when peoplewere to take a pledge to struggle for complete independence. But |
the celebrations attracted very little attention. So Mahatma Gandhi |
had to find a way to relate this abstract idea of freedom to moreconcrete issues of everyday life. |