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launched. |
February 1922Chauri Chaura; Gandhiji withdraws Non- |
Cooperation movement. |
May 1924Alluri Sitarama Raju arrested ending a two-year |
armed tribal struggle. |
December 1929Lahore Congress; Congress adopts the demand |
for ‘Purna Swaraj’. |
1930Ambedkar establishes Depressed Classes |
Association. |
March 1930Gandhiji begins Civil Disobedience Movement by |
breaking salt law at Dandi. |
March 1931Gandhiji ends Civil Disobedience Movement. |
December 1931 |
Second Round Table Conference.1932 |
Civil Disobedience re-launched.67 |
Nationalism in Indiapicketed foreign cloth and liquor shops. Many went to jail. In urban |
areas these women were from high-caste families; in rural areas |
they came from rich peasant households. Moved by Gandhiji’s call, |
they began to see service to the nation as a sacred duty of women.Yet, this increased public role did not necessarily mean any radical |
change in the way the position of women was visualised. Gandhiji |
was convinced that it was the duty of women to look after homeand hearth, be good mothers and good wives. And for a long time |
the Congress was reluctant to allow women to hold any position |
of authority within the organisation. It was keen only on theirsymbolic presence. |
3.3 The Limits of Civil Disobedience |
Not all social groups were moved by the abstract concept of swaraj.One such group was the nation’s ‘untouchables’, who from around |
the 1930s had begun to call themselves dalit or oppressed. For |
long the Congress had ignored the dalits, for fear of offending thesanatanis, the conservative high-caste Hindus. But Mahatma Gandhi |
declared that swaraj would not come for a hundred years ifuntouchability was not eliminated. He called the ‘untouchables’ harijan,Why did various classes and groups of Indians |
participate in the Civil Disobedience |
Movement?Discuss |
Fig. 9 – Women join |
nationalist processions. |
During the nationalmovement, many women,for the first time in theirlives, moved out of theirhomes on to a public arena.Amongst the marchers youcan see many old women,and mothers with children intheir arms.India and the Contemporary World |
68or the children of God, organised satyagraha to secure them entry |
into temples, and access to public wells, tanks, roads and schools.He himself cleaned toilets to dignify the work of the bhangi (the |
sweepers), and persuaded upper castes to change their heart and |
give up ‘the sin of untouchability’. But many dalit leaders were keenon a different political solution to the problems of the community. |
They began organising themselves, demanding reserved seats in |
educational institutions, and a separate electorate that would choosedalit members for legislative councils. Political empowerment, they |
believed, would resolve the problems of their social disabilities. |
Dalit participation in the Civil Disobedience Movement wastherefore limited, particularly in the Maharashtra and Nagpur region |
where their organisation was quite strong. |
Dr B.R. Ambedkar, who organised the dalits into the Depressed |
Classes Association in 1930, clashed with Mahatma Gandhi at |
the second Round Table Conference by demanding separate |
electorates for dalits. When the British government concededAmbedkar’s demand, Gandhiji began a fast unto death. He believed |
that separate electorates for dalits would slow down the process of |
their integration into society. Ambedkar ultimately accepted Gandhiji’sposition and the result was the Poona Pact of September 1932. |
It gave the Depressed Classes (later to be known as the Schedule |
Castes) reserved seats in provincial and central legislative councils,but they were to be voted in by the general electorate. The dalit |
movement, however, continued to be apprehensive of the Congress- |
led national movement. |
Some of the Muslim political organisations in India were also |
lukewarm in their response to the Civil Disobedience Movement. |
After the decline of the Non-Cooperation-Khilafat movement, alarge section of Muslims felt alienated from the Congress. From the |
mid-1920s the Congress came to be more visibly associated with |
openly Hindu religious nationalist groups like the Hindu Mahasabha.As relations between Hindus and Muslims worsened, each |
community organised religious processions with militant fervour, |
provoking Hindu-Muslim communal clashes and riots in variouscities. Every riot deepened the distance between the two communities. |
The Congress and the Muslim League made efforts to renegotiate |
an alliance, and in 1927 it appeared that such a unity could be forged.The important differences were over the question of representation |
in the future assemblies that were to be elected. Muhammad Ali |
Fig. 10 – Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru |
and Maulana Azad at Sevagram Ashram, |
Wardha, 1935.69 |
Nationalism in IndiaJinnah, one of the leaders of the Muslim League, was willing to give |
up the demand for separate electorates, if Muslims were assuredreserved seats in the Central Assembly and representation in |
proportion to population in the Muslim-dominated provinces (Bengal |
and Punjab). Negotiations over the question of representationcontinued but all hope of resolving the issue at the All Parties |
Conference in 1928 disappeared when M.R. Jayakar of the Hindu |
Mahasabha strongly opposed efforts at compromise. |
When the Civil Disobedience Movement started there was thus |
an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust between communities. |
Alienated from the Congress, large sections of Muslims could notrespond to the call for a united struggle. Many Muslim leaders and |
intellectuals expressed their concern about the status of Muslims |
as a minority within India. They feared that the culture and identityof minorities would be submerged under the domination of a |
Hindu majority. |
In 1930, Sir Muhammad Iqbal, as president of the Muslim League, reiterated the importance of separate electorates for |
the Muslims as an important safeguard for their minority political interests. His statement is supposed to have provided theintellectual justification for the Pakistan demand that came up in subsequent years. This is what he said: |
‘I have no hesitation in declaring that if the principle that the Indian Muslim is entitled to full and free development on the |
lines of his own culture and tradition in his own Indian home-lands is recognised as the basis of a permanent communalsettlement, he will be ready to stake his all for the freedom of India. The principle that each group is entitled to freedevelopment on its own lines is not inspired by any feeling of narrow communalism … A community which is inspired byfeelings of ill-will towards other communities is low and ignoble. I entertain the highest respect for the customs, laws,religions and social institutions of other communities. Nay, it is my duty according to the teachings of the Quran, even todefend their places of worship, if need be. Yet I love the communal group which is the source of life and behaviour andwhich has formed me what I am by giving me its religion, its literature, its thought, its culture and thereby its whole pastas a living operative factor in my present consciousness … |
‘Communalism in its higher aspect, then, is indispensable to the formation of a harmonious whole in a country like India. |
The units of Indian society are not territorial as in European countries … The principle of European democracy cannot beapplied to India without recognising the fact of communal groups. The Muslim demand for the creation of a Muslim Indiawithin India is, therefore, perfectly justified… |
‘The Hindu thinks that separate electorates are contrary to the spirit of true nationalism, because he understands the |
word “nation” to mean a kind of universal amalgamation in which no communal entity ought to retain its private individuality.Such a state of things, however, does not exist. India is a land of racial and religious variety. Add to this the generaleconomic inferiority of the Muslims, their enormous debt, especially in the Punjab, and their insufficient majorities in someof the provinces, as at present constituted and you will begin to see clearly the meaning of our anxiety to retain separateelectorates.’Source D |
Source |
Read the Source D carefully. Do you agree with Iqbal’s idea of communalism? Can you define communalism in a |
different way?DiscussIndia and the Contemporary World |
704 The Sense of Collective Belonging |
Nationalism spreads when people begin to believe that they are all |
part of the same nation, when they discover some unity that binds |
them together. But how did the nation become a reality in the mindsof people? How did people belonging to different communities, |
regions or language groups develop a sense of collective belonging? |
This sense of collective belonging came partly through the experience |
of united struggles. But there were also a variety of cultural processes |
through which nationalism captured people’s imagination. History |
and fiction, folklore and songs, popular prints and symbols, all playeda part in the making of nationalism. |
Fig. 11 – Bal Gangadhar Tilak, |
an early-twentieth-century print.Notice how Tilak is surrounded by symbols ofunity. The sacred institutions of different faiths(temple, church, masjid) frame the central figure.71 |
Nationalism in IndiaThe identity of the nation, as you know (see Chapter 1), is most |