The Indian Independence Movement, to 1947

1. The Indian Independence Movement, to 1947

2. The Land and the People • Despite periodic famines due to drought, India’s fertile land allowed the Indian population to increase from 250 million in 1900 to 389 million in 1941. • Population growth brought environmental pressure, deforestation, and a declining amount of farm land per family. • Indian society was divided into many classes: peasants, wealthy property owners, and urban craftsmen, traders, and workers.

3. The people of India spoke many different languages • English became the common medium of communication of the Western-educated middle class. • The majority of Indians practiced Hinduism. • Muslims constituted one-quarter of the people of India and formed a majority in the northwest and in eastern Bengal.

4. British Rule and Indian Nationalism • After the Indian mutiny, the East India Company was removed from power and Queen Victoria and British government took over rule India directly. • Colonial India, was ruled by a viceroy, a sort of deputy king, and administered by the Indian Civil Service. • Indian nationals had no say in central government and even at a local level, their influence on policy and decision making was minimal. • But the warning of the mutiny influenced much that happened afterwards. The fact that Muslims and Hindus ganged up together was something the British never ever wanted to happen again. • So they dealt with the Indians by grouping them according to their religion.

5. At the turn of the century, the majority of Indians accepted British rule • However, the racism and discrimination of the Europeans had inspired a group of intellectuals who just happened to be Hindus to establish a political organization called the Indian National Congress in 1885. • Largely as a result of British attitudes, Muslims were fearful of Hindu dominance and so the All-India Muslim League in 1906, thus giving India not one, but two independence movements.

6. ___________________ (INC) ? Muslim or Hindu?

7. ______ League Muslim or Hindu?

8. The British resisted the idea that India could or should industrialize, • (they wanted to protect industrial Britain and its workers) • but Pramatha Nath Bose of the Indian Geological Service and Jamseji Tata, a Bombay textile magnate, established India’s first steel mill in Jamshedpur in 1911. • Jamshedpur became a powerful symbol of Indian national pride.

9. Before the First World War • Moves were made to give some autonomy to the Indians (what is that?) • In response to this development, the Morley-Minto reforms were introduced in 1909. • Morley was the Secretary of State for India and Lord Morley was Viceroy of India. • Their reforms lead to each province in India having its own governor and Indian nationals were invited to sit on the councils which advised these governors (no elections you notice)

10. The First World War and after • The war started and many Indian regiments went to Europe to fight along side the British. • Once they returned, Indians had hoped that they would be given greater powers to run their own lives, in recompense for their help. • Instead, harsh laws that had been put in place in wartime, the restriction of legal rights, were not overturned but were made permanent by the Rowlett Act. • This together with a widespread flu epidemic and a famine, lead to widespread discontent.

11. Armitsar • Riots did break out when 2 Hindu leaders were imprisoned without trial under the Howlett Act. In early April, there were demonstrations in Armitsar, and there was some violence and about dozen deaths on both sides. • The army fearing an uprising, restricted most of the Punjab by martial law. The legislation limited a number of civil liberties, including freedom of assembly, banning gatherings of more than four people. • On April 13 1919, the holiday for thousands of Sikh people along with few Hindus and Muslims gathered in the main square in Amritsar where people celebrated by congregating in religious and community fairs. On the same day, a political meeting had been arranged – few of the Sikhs even knew about it.

12. Armitsar • An hour after the meeting began as scheduled at 4:30 pm, 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 armoured cars armed with machine guns. • The sqaure 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 armoured vehicles. General Dyer ordered troops to begin shooting without warning or any order to disperse, and to direct shooting towards the densest sections of the crowd. He continued the shooting, approximately 1,650 rounds in all, until ammunition was almost exhausted

13. Armitsar • Apart from the many deaths directly from the shooting, a number of people died in stampedes at the narrow gates or by jumping into the solitary well on the compound to escape the shooting. A plaque in the monument at the site, set up after independence, says that 120 bodies were pulled 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 and wild animals fed off the bodies. • The number of deaths caused by the shooting is disputed. While the official figure given by the British inquiry into the massacre is 379 deaths, the method used by the inquiry has been subject to criticism. Another investigation by the Indian National Congress seemed to indicate that the numbers were closer to 1000 deaths.

14. Armitsar • This incident shocked many in India but what caused equal outrage was the British reaction to Amritsar – the officer commanding British troops at Amritsar, General Dyer, was simply allowed to resign his commission after an inquiry criticised his leadership during the riot. • Many national Indians felt that he, and others in the army, had got away very lightly. The more radical Indians felt that the British government had all but sanctioned murder.  • As a result of Amritsar, many Indians rushed to join the INC and it very quickly became the party of the masses.

15. _________ Massacre General _____? 379(??) dead and over 1,500(??) wounded

16. Mahatma Gandhi and Militant Nonviolence • Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi (1869–1948) was an English-educated lawyer who practiced in South Africa before returning to India and joining the Indian National Congress during World War I. • Gandhi persuaded many of his followers to use non-violent protests. They had sit-down strikes, they refused to work, they refused to pay their taxes etc.

17. Mahatma Gandhi and Militant Nonviolence • If the British reacted in a heavy-handed manner, it only made the British look worse; essentially, the British would come across as bullies enforcing their rule on the bullied. • However, there were those in India who wanted to use more extreme measures. Gandhi with Nehru

18. In 1919, the Government of India Act was introduced. • This introduced a national parliament with two houses for India.About 5 million of the wealthiest Indians were given the right to vote (a very small percentage of the total population)Within the provincial governments, ministers of education, health and public works could now be Indian nationalsA commission would be held in 1929, to see if India was ready for more concessions/reforms. • However, the British controlled all central government and within the provincial governments, the British kept control of the key posts of tax and law and order.

19. Part of the 1919 Government of India Act stated that a commission would be established after 10 years to assess whether India could/should have more self-rule. This first met in 1928 – the Simon Commission. • This commission reported in 1930. There were no Indians on the commission. It proposed self-government for the provinces but nothing else. This was unacceptable for the INC, which wanted dominion status, granted immediately. • During the time the Simon Commission reported, Gandhi started his second civil disobedience campaign. • This included Gandhi deliberately breaking the law. • The law in India stated that only the government could manufacture salt. After a 250-mile march to the sea, Gandhi started to produce his own salt. • This produced a violent clash with the British authorities and Gandhi was arrested.

20. Satyagraha – the name that Gandhi gave to civil disobedience

21. The Salt March • In 1930, Gandhi organizes protest of Salt Acts • These laws force Indians to buy salt from the government • Salt March-240-mile walk led by Gandhi to collect seawater for salt • British police brutalize protestors; Indians gain worldwide support

22. India Moves Toward Independence • At this time, a sympathetic Viceroy to India had been appointed – Lord Irwin. He believed that India should have dominion status – and he publicly expressed this idea. Irwin pushed for the issue to be discussed. He organised two Round Table conferences in 1930 and 1931. They were both held in London. • The first conference failed as no INC members were present. Most were in Indian prisons. Irwin pushed for their release and he persuaded Gandhi to travel to Britain to take part in the second conference. Despite this development, the conference achieved little as it broke down over an issue that was to haunt India in future years – religion. Those present at the second conference, argued and failed to agree over what the representation of Muslims would be in an independent Indian parliament.

23. India Moves Toward Independence • In 1935, the Government of India Act was introduced. Britain, at this time, had a National Government and progress was made over India purely because Stanley Baldwin, the Tory leader, and Ramsey-MacDonald, the Labour leader, agreed on a joint course of action. Winston Churchill was bitterly opposed to it. The Act introduced: • An elected Indian assembly to have a say in everything in India except defence and foreign affairs. The eleven provincial assemblies were to have effective full control over local affairs. • The nationalists in India were not satisfied with this as the act did not introduce dominion status and white dominions (such as Australia and Canada) were allowed to control their own defence and foreign policies. Also the princes who still ruled areas of India refused to co-operate with the provincial assemblies so the second strand of the Act would have been meaningless..

24. India Moves Toward Independence • The act’s major failing was that it ignored the religious rivalry between the Muslims and Hindus. Nearly two-thirds of India’s population were Hindus and the Muslims feared that in an independent and democratic India they would be treated unfairly. • In the 1937 provincial elections, the Hindus, who dominated the Congress Party under Nehru, won eight out of the eleven provinces. • The Muslim League under Jinnah demanded a separate state of their own to be called Pakistan. • Both Gandhi and the Congress Party were determined to preserve Indian unity. Such a rivalry between the Hindus and Muslims could only bode ill for the future of India.

25. Partition and Independence • The Second World War divided the Indian people; Indians contributed heavily to the war effort, but the Indian National Congress opposed the war, and a minority of Indians joined the Japanese side. • When World War II ended, Britain’s new Labour Party government prepared for independence, there was mutual animosity between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. • This led to the partition of India into two states: India and Pakistan.

26. As a result • Some people found themselves on the wrong side of frontiers especially in the mixed provinces of the Punjab and Bengal. • Millions moved to the new frontiers – Hindus in what was to be the new Pakistan moved to India while Muslims in India moved to Pakistan. • Where the two moving groups met, violence occurred especially in the volatile Punjab province where it is though 250,000 people were murdered in religious clashes. • By the end of 1947, it seemed as if the violence was on the wane but in January 1948, a Hindu assassinated Gandhi. • In a gesture that summed up the whole problem of India, the Hindu detested Gandhi’s tolerance towards Muslims. However, the murder of Gandhi shocked so many people, that ironically it ushered in a period of stability.

27. Families were cut to half as men were killed leaving women to fend for themselves. In a couple of months in the summer of 1947, a million people were slaughtered on both sides in the religious rioting. Here, bodies of the victims of rioting are picked up from a city street.

28. Homework • Next week we start to talk about slavery. I am sure, if I asked you, what this was about, you would talk about America and the Caribbean, about how the British took people from Africa and left them in dreadful conditions? • But in fact slavery has a much longer history than that and was practiced by many other peoples in different parts of the world. • Your task is to find out when ,where and by whom slavery was practised in the past.

29. Homework • For one place/time only: • When? A century or a period of time • Who and where were the slave masters? • Where did their slaves come from? • How did they get their slaves? • If it is in PP then one slide only! • If it is in WORD, you see you will need to keep it brief.