Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement

Gandhi's Transformation of the Nationalist Movement: • Before Gandhi's arrival in Indian politics (1915), the Indian National Congress was largely an organisation of educated, urban, upper-caste Hindus — professionals (lawyers, doctors, teachers) who petitioned the British government through constitutional means. • Gandhi transformed it into a mass movement that mobilised peasants, women, artisans, industrial workers, and different religious communities. Gandhi's Methods: 1. Satyagraha (Truth-Force / Non-violent Resistance): • Gandhi's distinctive political method — confronting injustice through non-violent civil disobedience, accepting suffering rather than inflicting it. • The goal was not merely to win political concessions but to transform the moral character of both the oppressor and the oppressed — to convert the British through the moral force of non-violent suffering. • Gandhi believed violence corrupted both the violent and their cause. 2. Mass Mobilisation: • Gandhi understood that independence required the participation of millions of ordinary Indians, not just an educated elite. • He connected Indian politics to the concerns of ordinary people — high land revenue, salt tax, cloth imports, untouchability. • He used simple symbols (the charkha/spinning wheel, khadi/hand-spun cloth) that resonated across class and regional boundaries. Key Campaigns: 1. Champaran (1917): Gandhi's first major campaign in India — mobilised indigo farmers against oppressive contracts imposed by European planters. 2. Kheda (1918): Supported peasants of Kheda (Gujarat) demanding suspension of land revenue during a famine. 3. Non-Cooperation Movement (1920–22): Called on Indians to boycott British institutions (schools, courts, councils), return titles, and refuse to use British goods. Suspended after the Chauri Chaura violence (February 1922) — showing Gandhi's insistence that the movement remain non-violent. 4. Civil Disobedience Movement / Salt March (1930): The most dramatic campaign — Gandhi's 240-mile march to Dandi to make salt in defiance of the British salt monopoly. Inspired mass civil disobedience across India. 5. Quit India Movement (1942): Call for immediate British withdrawal — 'Do or Die.' The most militant of the major campaigns.

Gandhi's Vision of Swaraj (Self-Rule): • For Gandhi, swaraj was not merely political independence — it was moral and spiritual self-governance. • Swaraj meant: - Political: Freedom from British colonial rule. - Economic: Village self-sufficiency and decentralisation — rejection of Western industrialism and urban consumerism. - Moral: Individual and collective moral discipline — truth, non-violence, self-control, service. • Gandhi's programme (the constructive programme) included: hand-spinning and khadi, Hindu-Muslim unity, removal of untouchability, uplift of women, and promotion of village industries. • He was deeply critical of modern civilisation — its materialism, violence, and exploitation — and believed India's true strength lay in its villages and moral traditions. Gandhi and Untouchability: • Gandhi made the removal of untouchability a central part of the nationalist programme — he called it a 'blot on Hinduism.' • He named untouchables 'Harijans' (people of God) — though this term is now considered patronising by Dalits. • He insisted on eating with Harijans, allowing them into temples he used, and campaigning against their exclusion from public spaces. • However, Gandhi opposed B.R. Ambedkar's demand for separate electorates for untouchables (embodied in the Communal Award of 1932). Gandhi went on a 'fast unto death' — forcing the Poona Pact (1932), which substituted reserved seats in joint electorates for separate electorates. • Ambedkar criticised Gandhi's paternalism — arguing that Harijans needed political power to liberate themselves, not Gandhi's patronage. Hindu-Muslim Unity: • Gandhi placed Hindu-Muslim unity at the centre of his vision for India. He believed India could only be free if its major religious communities acted together. • The Khilafat Movement (1919–1922): Gandhi threw Congress's support behind the Muslim Khilafat movement (which sought to restore the Ottoman Caliph after WWI) — despite its religious basis — to forge Hindu-Muslim unity. • Gandhi was distressed by the communal violence of the 1940s — he fasted against communal violence, putting his life on the line to try to stop it.

The nationalist movement was not a monolithic entity — different groups joined it for different reasons and with different expectations: 1. Peasants: • Peasants joined nationalist campaigns primarily around their own agrarian grievances — high rents, revenue demands, and the power of zamindars and colonial revenue officials. • In the United Provinces (Awadh), peasant movements in the 1920s went beyond Gandhi's programme — peasants refused to pay rent, not just government taxes. • Peasants often interpreted Congress's call for swaraj as promising relief from economic exploitation — a vision that sometimes clashed with the Congress leadership's more moderate agenda. • After campaigns, peasants sometimes became disillusioned when the Congress leadership (protective of property rights) did not support radical land redistribution. 2. Industrial Workers: • Urban workers (textile mill workers, railway workers, miners) participated in nationalist campaigns — boycotts of British cloth hurt their own employment. • The relationship between the nationalist movement and the labour movement was complex — the Congress was cautious about militant labour action, fearing it would alienate industrialists who funded the movement. 3. Women: • The nationalist movement brought women into public political life on an unprecedented scale. • Women marched, picketed liquor shops and foreign cloth shops, organised salt satyagraha, went to jail. • For many women, participation was also a personal liberation — defying family restrictions to enter public space. • However, the nationalist movement also expected women to embody the ideals of sacrifice and selfless service — which reinscribed certain traditional gender roles. 4. Tribal Communities: • Tribal communities in central India, Rajasthan, and elsewhere had their own grievances — loss of forest rights, displacement by colonial forest laws, oppressive moneylenders. • Tribal people like the Bhils of Rajasthan joined Gandhi's movement partly because they believed swaraj meant a return of their forests and freedom from exploitation. • After independence, the failure to address tribal land rights led to long-running conflicts. 5. The Ambiguity of 'Independence': • A recurring theme: different groups understood 'swaraj' differently. The Congress leadership (often upper-caste, propertied) meant political independence. Peasants wanted land. Workers wanted labour rights. Women wanted equal status. Dalits wanted caste liberation. The movement united these aspirations without fully reconciling them.