The British Rule ? Details
11. The British Rule - Details
11.1 Timeline
1858 AD: British Crown officially takes over the Indian Government
1877 AD: Queen of England is proclaimed as the Empress of India
1899 AD: Lord Curzon becomes Governor-General and Viceroy of India 1905 AD: The First Partition of Bengal takes place
1906 AD: Muslim League is formed
1912 AD: The Imperial capital shifted to Delhi from Calcutta
1919 AD: The cruel Jallianwalla Bagh massacre takes place due to protests against the Rowlatt
Act
1920 AD: Non-cooperation Movement launched
1922 AD: Chauri-Chaura violence takes place due to Civil Disobedience Movement
1928 AD: Simon Commission comes to India and is boycotted by all parties
1930 AD: Salt Satyagraha is launched as an agitation against salt tax. First Round Table Conference takes place
1931 AD: Second Round Table Conference takes place and Irwin-Gandhi Pact is signed
1934 AD: Civil Disobedience Movement is called off
1942 AD: Cripps Mission is formed; Quit India Movement is launched; Indian National Army is formed.
3rd June 1947 AD: Lord Mountbatten's plan for partition of India comes intolight
15th August 1947 AD: Partition of India and Independence from the British rule
11.2. Rise of organized movements, 1857-1885
The decades following the Solder Rebellion were a period of growing political awareness, manifestation of Indian public opinion and emergence of Indian leadership at national and provincial levels. Dadabhai Naoroji formed East India Association in 1867, and Surendranath Banerjee founded Indian National Association in 1876. Inspired by a suggestion made by A.O. Hume, a retired British civil servant, seventy-three Indian delegates met in Mumbai in 1885 and founded the Indian National Congress. They were mostly members of the upwardly mobile and successful western-educated provincial elites, engaged in professions such as law, teaching, and journalism. At its inception, the Congress had no well-defined ideology and commanded few of the resources essential to a political organization. It functioned more as a debating society that met annually to express its loyalty to the British Raj and passed numerous resolutions on less controversial issues such as civil rights or opportunities in government, especially the civil service. These resolutions were submitted to the Viceroy's government and occasionally to the British Parliament, but the Congress's early gains were meagre.
Despite its claim to represent all India, the Congress voiced the interests of urban elites; the number of participants from other economic backgrounds remained negligible.
The influences of socio-religious groups such as Arya Samaj (started by Swami Dayanand Saraswati) and Brahmo Samaj (founded, amongst others, by Raja Ram Mohan Roy) became evident in pioneering reform of Indian society. The inculcation of religious reform and social pride was fundamental to the rise of a public movement for complete nationhood. The work of men like Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Sri Aurobindo, Subramanya Bharathy, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Rabindranath Tagore and Dadabhai Naoroji spread the passion for rejuvenation and freedom.
11.3. Partition of Bengal
In 1905, Curzon, the Viceroy and Governor-General (1899-1905),applied the policy of DIVIDE AND RULE and ordered the partition of the province of Bengal for improvements in administrative efficiency in that huge and populous region, where the Bengali Hindu intelligentsia exerted considerable influence on local and national politics. The partition outraged Bengalis. Not only had the government failed to consult Indian public opinion, but the action appeared to reflect the British resolve to divide and rule. Widespread agitation ensued in the streets and in the press, and the Congress advocated boycotting British products under the banner of swadeshi.
During the partition of Bengal new methods of struggle were adopted. These led to swadeshi and boycott movements. The Congress-led boycott of British goods was so successful that it unleashed anti-British forces to an extent unknown since the Sepoy Rebellion. A cycle of violence and repression ensued. The British tried to mitigate the situation by announcing a series of constitutional reforms in 1909 and by appointing a few moderates to the imperial and provincial councils. In what the British saw as an additional goodwill gesture, in 1911 King-Emperor George V visited India for a durbar (a traditional court held for subjects to express fealty to their ruler), during which he announced the reversal of the partition of Bengal and the transfer of the capital from Calcutta to a newly planned city to be built immediately south of Delhi, which later became New Delhi.
11.4. Gandhi arrives in India
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (also known as Mahatma Gandhi), had been a prominent leader ofthe anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, and had been a vocal opponent of basic discrimination and abusive labor treatment as well as suppressive
police control such as the Rowlatt Acts. During these protests, Gandhi had perfected the concept of satyagraha. The end of the protests in South Africa saw oppressive legislation repealed and the release of political prisoners.
Gandhi, a stranger to India and its politics had arrived after twenty years on 6th January 1915, had initially entered the fray not with calls for a nation-state, but in support of the unified commerce-oriented territory that the Congress Party had been asking for. Gandhi believed that the industrial development and educational development that the Europeans had brought with them were required to alleviate many of India's problems. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a veteran Congressman and Indian leader became Gandhi's mentor. Gandhi's ideas and strategies of non-violent civil disobedience initially appeared impractical to some Indians and Congressmen. In Gandhi's own words, "civil disobedience is civil breach of unmoral statutory enactments." It had to be carried out non-violently by withdrawing cooperation with the corrupt state. Gandhi's ability to inspire millions of common people became clear when he used satyagraha during the anti-Rowlatt Act protests in Punjab.
Gandhi s vision would soon bring millions of regular Indians into the movement, transforming it from an elitist struggle to a national one. The nationalist cause was expanded to include the interests and industries that formed the economy of common Indians. For example, in Champaran, Bihar, the Congress Party championed the plight of desperately poor sharecroppers and landless farmers who were being forced to pay oppressive taxes and grow cash crops at the expense of the subsistence crops which formed their food supply. The profits from the crops they grew were insufficient to provide for their sustenance.
11.5. The massacre of Jallianwala
On April 13, thousands of people gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh (garden) near the Golden Temple in Amritsar, on Baisakhi, An hour after the meeting began as scheduled at 4:30pm, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer marched a group of sixty-five Gurkha and twenty-five Baluchi soldiers into the Bagh, fifty of whom were armed with rifles. Dyer had also brought two armored cars armed with machine guns; however the vehicles were stationed outside the main gate as they were unable to enter the Bagh through the narrow entrance.
The Jallianwala Bagh was bounded on all sides by houses and buildings and had few narrow entrances, most of which were kept permanently locked. The main entrance was relatively wider, but was guarded by the troops backed by the armored vehicles. General Dyer ordered troops to open fire without warning or any order to disperse, and to direct fire towards the densest sections of the crowd. He continued the firing, approximately 1,650 rounds in all, until ammunition was almost exhausted.
Apart from the many deaths directly from the firing, a number of deaths were caused by stampedes at the narrow gates as also people who sought shelter from the firing by jumping into the solitary well inside the compound. A plaque in the monument at the site, set up after independence, says that 120 bodies were plucked out of the well.
The wounded could not be moved from where they had fallen, as a curfew had been declared - many more died during the night. British inquiry into the massacre is 379 deaths. The casualty figure quoted by the Indian National Congress was more than 1,500, with roughly 1,000 killed.
11.6. The first Non cooperation movement
The first Satyagraha movement urged the use of Khadi and Indian material as alternatives to those shipped from Britain. It also urged people to boycott British educational institutions and law courts; resign from government employment; refuse to pay taxes; and forsake British titles and honors. Although this came too late to influence the framing of the new Government of India Act of 1919, the movement enjoyed widespread popular support, and the resulting unparalleled magnitude of disorder presented a serious challenge to foreign rule. However, Gandhi called off the movement following the Chauri Chaura incident, which saw the death of twenty-two policemen at the hands of an angry mob.
In 1920, the Congress was reorganized and given a new constitution, whose goal was Swaraj (independence). Membership in the party was opened to anyone prepared to pay a token fee, and a hierarchy of committees was established and made responsible for discipline and control over a hitherto amorphous and diffuse movement. The party was transformed from an elite organization to one of mass national appeal and participation.
Gandhi was sentenced in 1922 to six years of prison, but was released after serving two.
On his release from prison, he set up the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, on the
banks of river Sabarmati, established the newspaper Young India, and inaugurated a series of reforms aimed at the socially disadvantaged within Hindu society the rural poor, and the untouchables.
This era saw the emergence of new generation of Indians from within the Congress Party, including C. Rajagopalachari, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose and others- who would later on come to form the prominent voices of the Indian independence movement.
11.7. Purna Swaraj
Following the rejection of the recommendations of the Simon Commission by Indians, an all-party conference was held at Bombay in May 1928. This was meant to instill a sense of resistance among people. It was decided that 26 January 1930 should be observed all over India as the Purna Swaraj (total independence) Day. Many Indian political parties and Indian revolutionaries of a wide spectrum united to observe the day with honor and pride.
11.8. Salt March and Civil Disobedience
Gandhi emerged from his long seclusion by undertaking his most famous campaign, a march of about 400 kilometers [240 miles] from his commune in Ahmedabad to Dandi, on the coast of Gujarat between 12 March and 6 April 1930. The march is usually known as the Dandi March or the Salt Satyagraha. At Dandi, in protest against British taxes on salt, he and thousands of followers broke the law by making their own salt from seawater. It took 24 days for him to complete this march. Every day he covered 10 miles and gave many speeches. In April 1930 there were violent police-crowd clashes in Calcutta. Approximately 100,000 people were imprisoned in the course of the Civil disobedience movement (1930-31). For the next few years, the Congress and the government were locked in conflict and
negotiations until what became the Government of India Act of 1935 could be hammered out. By then, the rift between the Congress and the Muslim League had
become unbridgeable as each pointed the finger at the other acrimoniously. The Muslim League disputed the claim of the Congress to represent all people of India, while the
Congress disputed the Muslim League's claim to voice the aspirations of all Muslims.
11.9. Quit India
The Quit India Movement (Bharat ChhodoAndolan) or the August Movement was a civil disobedience movement in India launched in August 1942 in response to Gandhi's call for immediate independence of India and against sending Indians to the World War II. He asked all the teachers to leave their school, and other Indians to leave away their respective jobs and take part in this movement. Every one obeyed Gandhiji as he was a very-well known leader throughout the world. On 8 August 1942, the Quit India resolution was passed at the Bombay session of the All India Congress Committee (AICC). The draft proposed that if the British did not accede to the demands, a massive Civil Disobedience would be launched. The British, already alarmed by the advance of the Japanese army to the India-Burma border, responded the next day by imprisoning Gandhi. The movement soon became a leaderless act of defiance, with a number of acts that deviated from Gandhi's principle of non-violence. In large parts of the country, the local underground organizations took over the movement. However, by 1943, Quit India had petered out.
11.10. Independence, 1947 to 1950
On 3 June 1947, Viscount Louis Mountbatten, the last British Governor-General of India, announced the partitioning of the British Indian Empire into India and Pakistan. On 14 August 1947, Pakistan was declared a separate nation from them at 11:57. At 12:02 midnight, on 15 August 1947, India became an independent nation. Violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims followed. Prime Minister Nehru and Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel invited Mountbatten to continue as Governor General of India. He was replaced in June 1948 by Chakravarti Rajagopalachari. Patel took on the responsibility of unifying 565 princely states, steering efforts by his iron fist in a velvet glove policies, exemplified by the use of military force to integrate Junagadh and Hyderabad state (Operation Polo) into India.
August 15, 1947: Mount Batten swears Nehru as Prime Minister of India
The Constituent Assembly completed the work of drafting the constitution on 26 November 1949; on 26 January 1950 the Republic of India was officially proclaimed. The Constituent Assembly elected Dr. Rajendra Prasad as the first President of India, taking over from Governor General Rajgopalachari. Subsequently, a free and sovereign India absorbed three other territories: Goa (from Portuguese control in 1961), Pondicherry (which the French ceded in 1953-1954) and Sikkim which was absorbed in 1975. In 1952, India held its first general elections, with a voter turnout exceeding 62%.
