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What was the Indian Independence Movement? What was the impact on the Indian Independence Movement?
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.
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").
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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