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What was the Indian Independence Movement?
What was the impact on the Indian Independence Movement?
Transcribed Image Text:Returning to India in 1915, Gandhi quickly rose within the leadership ranks of the INC
(image to the right). During the 1920s and 1930s, he applied his approach in periodic
mass campaigns that drew support from an extraordinarily wide spectrum of Indians -
peasants and the urban poor, intellectuals and artisans, capitalists and socialists, Hindus
and Muslims. The British responded with periodic repression as well as concessions that
allowed a greater Indian role in political life. Gandhi's conduct and actions – his simple
and unpretentious lifestyle, his support of Muslims, his frequent reference to Hindu
religious themes - appealed widely in India and transformed the INC into a mass
organization. He fought especially hard to improve the status of the lowest classes of
society, the casteless Untouchables, whom he called harijans ("children of God").
Gandhi and the INC leadership struggled
because INC members had a wide range of
movements, parties, and approaches. The
party's diversity tore at the national unity that
Gandhi and INC leaders wanted. Whereas
Gandhi rejected modern industrialization, his
own chief lieutenant, Jawaharlal Nehru,
thoroughly embraced science, technology, and
industry as essential to India's future. (Nehru,
leader of the INC, would become India's first
Prime Minister). And not everyone accepted
(From left to right) Nehru, Jinnah, Gandhi Gandhi's nonviolence and his inclusive
definition of India. A militant Hindu
organization preached hatred of Muslims and viewed India as an essentially Hindu
nation.
By far the most serious threat to a unified movement derived from the growing divide
between the country's Hindu and Muslim populations. As early as 1906, the formation
of an All-India Muslim League contradicted the Congress Party's claim to speak for all
Indians. As the British allowed more elected Indian representatives on local councils, the
League demanded separate electorates, with a fixed number of seats for Muslims. As
Muslims were a distinct minority within India, some of them feared that their voice
could be overshadowed by Hindu population, who were the majority of the population.
When the 1937 elections gave the Congress Party control of many local governments,
some of those governments began to enforce the teaching of Hindi in schools, rather
than Urdu, which is written in a Persian script and favored by Muslims. This policy, as
well as Hindu efforts to protect cows from slaughter, antagonized Muslims. As the
movement for independence gained ground, the Muslim League and its leader,
Muhammad Ali Jinnah (JIN-uh), argued that those parts of India that had a Muslim
majority should have a separate political status. They called it Pakistan, meaning "land of
the pure."
In August 1946, in the midst of negotiations with the British to reach terms regarding
independence, the Muslim League called for a Day of Direct Action, even though the
league's leaders recognized that Muslim demonstrations might lead to rioting and
fighting between Muslims and Hindus. Some six thousand people died in the Great
Calcutta Killing that resulted, further fueling communal feeling and adding weight to
Jinnah's claim: "The only solution to India's problem is Pakistan."
Partition
TIBET
The idea of partition, the division of
India into separate Hindu and Muslim
states, violated the stated ideals of
men such as Gandhi and Nehru.
BHUTAN
WEST
PAKISTAN
Gandhi condemned the division of his
INDIA
homeland as "vivisection," using a
term that refers to the cutting up of a
living body.
celebrations on 15 August 1947 that
accompanied independence for India
and Pakistan, glumly prophesying that
EAST
PAKISTAN
He avoided
the
HYDERABAD
Arabian Sea
GOA
e
Bay of Bengal
"rivers of blood" would flow in the wake of partition.
His vision came true as the terms of
partition were announced and hundreds
of thousands of Muslim and Hindu
refugees migrated to either Muslim
Pakistan (divided between parts of
Bengal in the east and Punjab in the
west) or Hindu India. By mid-1948 an
estimated ten million refugees made the
tortuous journey to one or the other
state, and between half a million and
one million people had died in the
violence that accompanied those massive human migrations. Gandhi undertook
measures, including hunger strikes, in the hope of quelling the violence between
Muslims and Hindus; he continually urged all Indians and Pakistanis to adhere to the
practice of nonviolence. When Gandhi was shot he became a martyr to his cause, killed
by the violence he so abhorred.
![British Imperialism
Unlike previous foreign rulers, the British never assimilated into Indian society because
their acute sense of racial and cultural distinctiveness kept them apart. This served to
intensify Indians' awareness of their collective difference from their alien rulers.
Furthermore, British railroads, telegraph lines, postal services, administrative networks,
newspapers, and schools as well as the English language bound India's many regions and
peoples together more firmly than ever before and facilitated communication, especially
among those with a modern education. Early nineteenth-century cultural nationalists,
seeking to renew and reform Hinduism, registered this sense of India as a cultural unit.
Indian National Congress
The most important political expression of an all-Indian identity took shape in the Indian
National Congress (INC), often called the Congress Party, which was established in 1885.
This was an association of English-educated Indians – lawyers, journalists, teachers,
businessmen – drawn overwhelmingly from regionally prominent high-caste Hindu
families. It represented the beginning of a new kind of political protest, quite different
from the rebellions, banditry, and refusal to pay taxes that had periodically erupted in
the rural areas of colonial India. The INC was largely an urban phenomenon and quite
moderate in its demands. Initially, its well-educated members did not seek to overthrow
British rule; rather they hoped to gain greater inclusion within the political, military, and
business life of British India. From such positions of influence, they argued, they could
better protect the interests of India than could their foreign-born rulers.
World War I and II
World War I - As an elite organization, the INC (Indian National Congress) had difficulty
gaining a large following among India's vast peasant population. That began to change
World War I. To attract Indian support for the war effort, the British in 1917 had
promised "the gradual development of self-governing institutions," a commitment that
energized nationalist politicians to demand more rapid political change. Over a million
Indians participated in World War I for the British,
Furthermore, British attacks on the Islamic Ottoman Empire antagonized (angered)
India's Muslims. The end of the war was followed by a massive influenza epidemic,
which cost the lives of millions of Indians. Finally, a series of violent repressive British
actions antagonized many.
"Copyright: Achievement First. Unless otherwise noted, all of the content in this resource is licensed under a Creative Comi
4.0 (CC BY) license
World War I| - So in 1939, members of the Indian National Congress informed Viceroy
Lord Linlithgow--the highest-ranking British official in India-they would only support
the war effort if India gained independence after the war. To which Linlithgow
responded with his own threat: if the Congress didn't support Britain, Britain would
simply turn to and use the Hindu-Muslim tensions to cause dissension in the country. As
Winston Churchill stated, "the Hindu-Moslem feud (was] a (protection] of British rule in
India."
Gandhi
This was the context in which Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) arrived on the Indian
political scene and soon transformed it. Gandhi was born in the province of Gujarat in
western India to a pious Hindu family of the Vaisya, or business, caste. In 1893 he
accepted a job with an Indian law firm in South Africa, where a substantial number of
Indians had migrated as indentured laborers during the nineteenth century. While in
South Africa, Gandhi personally experienced overt racism for the first time and soon
became involved in organizing Indians, mostly Muslims, to protest that country's policies
of racial segregation. He also developed a concept of India that included Hindus and
Muslims alike,
Returning to India in 1915, Gandhi quickly rose within the leadership ranks of the INC
(image to the right). During the 1920s and 1930s, he applied his approach in periodic
mass campaigns that drew support from an extraordinarily wide spectrum of Indians
peasants and the urban poor, intellectuals and artisans, capitalists and socialists, Hindus
and Muslims. The British responded with periodic repression as well as concessions that
allowed a greater Indian role in political life. Gandhi's conduct and actions - his simple
and unpretentious lifestyle, his support of Muslims, his frequent reference to Hindu
religious themes - appealed widely in India and transformed the INC into a mass
organization. He fought especially hard to improve the status of the lowest classes of
society, the casteless Untouchables, whom he called harijans ("children of God").](/v2/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcontent.bartleby.com%2Fqna-images%2Fquestion%2F7c6a3dff-6729-485c-933e-bf615eefedb6%2Fff8a2fec-aed2-4fb1-9cde-397adcbde96e%2Fioha9q_processed.jpeg&w=3840&q=75)
Transcribed Image Text:British Imperialism
Unlike previous foreign rulers, the British never assimilated into Indian society because
their acute sense of racial and cultural distinctiveness kept them apart. This served to
intensify Indians' awareness of their collective difference from their alien rulers.
Furthermore, British railroads, telegraph lines, postal services, administrative networks,
newspapers, and schools as well as the English language bound India's many regions and
peoples together more firmly than ever before and facilitated communication, especially
among those with a modern education. Early nineteenth-century cultural nationalists,
seeking to renew and reform Hinduism, registered this sense of India as a cultural unit.
Indian National Congress
The most important political expression of an all-Indian identity took shape in the Indian
National Congress (INC), often called the Congress Party, which was established in 1885.
This was an association of English-educated Indians – lawyers, journalists, teachers,
businessmen – drawn overwhelmingly from regionally prominent high-caste Hindu
families. It represented the beginning of a new kind of political protest, quite different
from the rebellions, banditry, and refusal to pay taxes that had periodically erupted in
the rural areas of colonial India. The INC was largely an urban phenomenon and quite
moderate in its demands. Initially, its well-educated members did not seek to overthrow
British rule; rather they hoped to gain greater inclusion within the political, military, and
business life of British India. From such positions of influence, they argued, they could
better protect the interests of India than could their foreign-born rulers.
World War I and II
World War I - As an elite organization, the INC (Indian National Congress) had difficulty
gaining a large following among India's vast peasant population. That began to change
World War I. To attract Indian support for the war effort, the British in 1917 had
promised "the gradual development of self-governing institutions," a commitment that
energized nationalist politicians to demand more rapid political change. Over a million
Indians participated in World War I for the British,
Furthermore, British attacks on the Islamic Ottoman Empire antagonized (angered)
India's Muslims. The end of the war was followed by a massive influenza epidemic,
which cost the lives of millions of Indians. Finally, a series of violent repressive British
actions antagonized many.
"Copyright: Achievement First. Unless otherwise noted, all of the content in this resource is licensed under a Creative Comi
4.0 (CC BY) license
World War I| - So in 1939, members of the Indian National Congress informed Viceroy
Lord Linlithgow--the highest-ranking British official in India-they would only support
the war effort if India gained independence after the war. To which Linlithgow
responded with his own threat: if the Congress didn't support Britain, Britain would
simply turn to and use the Hindu-Muslim tensions to cause dissension in the country. As
Winston Churchill stated, "the Hindu-Moslem feud (was] a (protection] of British rule in
India."
Gandhi
This was the context in which Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) arrived on the Indian
political scene and soon transformed it. Gandhi was born in the province of Gujarat in
western India to a pious Hindu family of the Vaisya, or business, caste. In 1893 he
accepted a job with an Indian law firm in South Africa, where a substantial number of
Indians had migrated as indentured laborers during the nineteenth century. While in
South Africa, Gandhi personally experienced overt racism for the first time and soon
became involved in organizing Indians, mostly Muslims, to protest that country's policies
of racial segregation. He also developed a concept of India that included Hindus and
Muslims alike,
Returning to India in 1915, Gandhi quickly rose within the leadership ranks of the INC
(image to the right). During the 1920s and 1930s, he applied his approach in periodic
mass campaigns that drew support from an extraordinarily wide spectrum of Indians
peasants and the urban poor, intellectuals and artisans, capitalists and socialists, Hindus
and Muslims. The British responded with periodic repression as well as concessions that
allowed a greater Indian role in political life. Gandhi's conduct and actions - his simple
and unpretentious lifestyle, his support of Muslims, his frequent reference to Hindu
religious themes - appealed widely in India and transformed the INC into a mass
organization. He fought especially hard to improve the status of the lowest classes of
society, the casteless Untouchables, whom he called harijans ("children of God").
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